Toronto, Ontario, Saturday, November 9, 2013

 

Let me begin by thanking all of you for being here. Your presence is an indication of your commitment to higher education in this province and beyond.

I would like do three things in my remarks today, to add my perspective to the questions you are asking at this conference: What should university boards be thinking? What’s in store for the next decade?

First, I want to underline the importance of your role as university governors and perhaps redefine that role with you.

Second, I want to explore five questions that are particularly relevant and important for each of you as governors, who help determine the university’s vision. So vision is a key metaphor in our discussion.

Briefly, these questions are:

1. Can we have equality of opportunity and excellence too? In other words, can Ontario universities see broad and deep?
2. Can we look outwards, beyond our limits—seeing wide?
3. How do we embrace change and instill a sense of reinvention and renewal? Can we see forward?
4. As a subset of that question, how do we see things new in our approach to learning specifically? We have learned so much about how we learn in the past 20 years. How can universities apply this knowledge to the benefit of all?
5. Finally, how do we see clearly within, to ensure the student experience is at once stimulating, refreshing and comforting?

As you may have noticed, the unifying theme among these five points is the idea of seeing, which speaks to your role as visionaries within your respective institutions.

There’s one other thing I would like to do in my remarks today: Make them shorter so we can have a conversation and all learn something together.

Or as my grandmother used to say: Stand up to be seen, speak up to be heard, and sit down to be appreciated!

Allow me to start with a few words about your roles as university governors.

In my view, the term ‘governor’ is not very useful. It suggests that you oversee or govern every aspect of the university, which of course is not true.

As an aside, the first board on which I served—at Harvard—used the term ‘overseer,’ an even worse title with all kinds of negative historical associations.

While you are not ‘governors’ in the strict sense of the word, you do have an overall responsibility for the welfare of the university and its students and staff.

A better term may be ‘trustee,’ because each of you has been entrusted with that important responsibility. You are not paid for this work, and many of you likely do not represent a particular constituency. Most of you are alumni and community members, and you want to serve the cause of higher learning in this province. And if you come from a constituency, your interest is the university as a whole.

You are disinterested, in the very best sense of the word.

The term ‘trustee’ also invokes a sense of your responsibility for the ethical framework of the institution—a duty whose importance cannot be underestimated.

And as a trustee, above all you must have a sense of its sustainability and endurance, and a vision of the university’s future in your community.

When we speak of trust, I always think of a line Mark Carney once shared with me:

Trust arrives on foot and leaves in a Ferrari.

Each of you is here early on a Saturday morning because you want to be more effective in exercising your duties. I would like to applaud your leadership. You set the standard for the success of your school.

Let me turn now to the five questions about seeing things whole, and your responsibilities in crafting and living the vision for your respective institutions.

First, equality of opportunity and excellence: Can we have both, can we see things both broadly and in depth?

These two goals should be complementary, not conflicting.

On equality of opportunity, or accessibility to postsecondary education, Canada has worked hard and done well. In my lifetime, we’ve seen the number of those with some sort of postsecondary education go from about 25 per cent to more than 75 per cent. This is a great triumph for Canadian universities.

But not all the news is good. Postsecondary schooling is not within the reach of all. You may be familiar with the OECD study that ranked member nations on accessibility—specifically, on the degree to which children met or exceeded the educational levels of their parents.

The rankings were measured in quintiles. For the top 80 per cent of students, Canada was ranked number one in terms of how many equalled or exceeded their parents’ level of education.

However, for the other 20 per cent of students, Canada ranked in the bottom third among OECD member nations. This tells us that a significant portion of our population has less access to education than their parents, and it also tells us that we can do better. 

On excellence, Canada likewise does well but can do better.

On this, I would like to emphasize the importance of aiming high and celebrating achievement to create a culture of excellence.

The emergence of a world-class community of researchers and creative minds in Canada is undoubtedly one of our country’s greatest achievements of the past 50 years.

But it is worth asking: Do we as a nation and does the world at large recognize the talent that exists in Canada today? Are we celebrating the work of our leading scholars, and the spirit of learning and critical thinking that drives them? Is their success being shared with and noted by the world?

On this, our record is mixed. As the Science, Technology and Innovation Council has pointed out, Canadians are in fact winners of a disproportionately large share of global awards. We do particularly well in the fields of environment, medicine and technology. These are important successes, not to be undervalued.

However, when it comes to the world’s most distinguished awards—the Nobel Prize (notwithstanding Alice Munro’s recent win in literature), the Wolf Prize and the Fields Medal, for example—our country is underperforming. In the period from 1941 to 2008, Canadians received 19 of the top international awards in science—an impressive achievement, certainly, but lacking on a per-capita basis when compared with the United States (with 1 403 winners), the United Kingdom (222), France (91), Germany (75) and Australia (42).

It’s also worth mentioning our ranking as global universities. As you know, there are a number of such rankings, so let me choose just one for the sake of illustration: the Times Higher Education World University Rankings.

Here we see Canada with 3 universities in the top 40—the University of Toronto at #20; the University of British Columbia at #31; and McGill at #35.

In the top 40, Canada compares favourably with Australia and the Netherlands, for example. It is noteworthy, however, that those two countries, with significantly smaller populations than ours, outperform us in the top 100. The Netherlands has 8 universities in the top 100, Australia has 5, and Canada just 4.

These rankings are not the final word. Their criteria are quite specific and, for example, can favour centuries-old institutions with large libraries. Nevertheless, rankings can be useful in helping us to be more critical about our institutions and how they are viewed from abroad. They also point us toward general but important truths: for example, with 15 universities in the global top 20, I would not want to bet against the ability of the United States to continue its dominance as a global intellectual power.

As trustees, I would ask you: which departments in your respective universities have a world-class status? And are you drawing on their excellence to radiate success and best practices outwards to other departments? Is there a way your university can better employ awards and prizes to foster excellence?

Aspiring to excellence is important not just for its own sake, but as a means of lifting all ships to create better overall quality and accessibility.

I recently returned from State visits to China and Mongolia, where I was again reminded of how that knowledge is transmitted from one society to another, past and present.

First, a brief history: the little-known story of Genghis Khan’s contribution to Western civilization.

To many Westerners, Genghis Khan would seem an unlikely purveyor of knowledge and enlightenment. And yet, I learned a great deal about this remarkable leader during my visit to Mongolia. The Mongol conquest of lands stretching from the Pacific Ocean in the East to Vienna in the West saw Genghis Khan and his descendants share knowledge, thought and new devices—the stirrup, compass, gunpowder and printing press—with peoples across the vastness of Asia and into Western Europe.

Scholars are only beginning to unravel the complex nature of discovery and the way in which ideas spread throughout human societies. The notion that the Enlightenment may have been sparked at least in part by Mongol ingenuity may be new to us, but it is consistent with what we are learning about how ideas travel and civilizations thrive or fail according to their capacity to evolve creatively.

Now, this history is all very interesting, you may think. But it cannot be denied that the success of Ontario’s universities depends on their ability to be aware of and connect with learning taking place around the world. A smart and successful nation looks outward to the world with confidence and respect, engaging in dialogue and exchange for mutual benefit.

To quote the Advisory Panel led by Amit Chakma on Canada’s International Education Strategy:

“It is important […] that all Canadians embrace the benefits to Canada of international education. In the global knowledge economy, how we manage international education will affect the course of our economic prosperity as well as our place in the world.”

I would encourage you to take a look at the Advisory Panel’s recommendations and consider how your university can respond.

Closer to home, there is another way to look outward: through partnerships within your communities, including co-op programs and experiential learning.

The third question I want to ask is: Can we see forward? How do we reinvent and renew our approach to learning to ensure postsecondary education is relevant?

What is certain is that we must do so. Change is not only happening, it is accelerating.

As you know, the impact of new technologies is already transforming the way we learn. The rise of MOOCs, for example, is a real factor in education today. Online learning will not replace universities, but digital communications can supplement our teaching and enhance learning for students and researchers.

Thanks to new communications technologies, we have a whole new way of sharing and circulating information. MOOCs are just one way to take advantage, and we must all prepare for and adapt to change and find ways to harness it to our learning.

I would also like to touch on what is perhaps a subset of the imperative to “see forward,” by asking the fourth question: Can we see things new within the mind and in the way we learn?

Let me share a startling fact: At least 80 per cent of what we know about the brain we have learned in the past 20 years. We understand how the brain functions better than ever, and I suspect that in the years ahead those learning institutions that are able to adapt their methods to the ways in which we learn best will be most successful.

Consider, for example, recent advances in our understanding of the brain and the importance of physical activity to learning. Researchers have shown that poor physical fitness weakens the connections between neurons and shrinks the hippocampus, which is essential to learning and memory.

According to a recent study featured in the New Scientist, exercise among senior citizens had the result of expanding the hippocampi and restoring neural communication across the brain to that of the level of a 30-year-old. A mild exercise routine resulted in a cognitive boost and heightened attention span—both keys to learning.

The implications of such findings are significant, particularly given the incidence of obesity and cardiovascular disease in our society.

As people who care about learning, we cannot afford to ignore these and the many other findings that point to the link between mind and body. We must heed the growing body of research on the subject of how we learn.

The fifth and last question: How do we see clearly within our universities, to ensure the student experience is at once stimulating, refreshing and comforting?

By this, I mean to emphasize the importance of ensuring our campuses are places that students want to be, in addition to being places where they are challenged and stimulated to learn.

Once again it is not an either/or scenario: We must be both.

We must not take this for granted, because ensuring our campuses are caring and welcoming is both the right thing to do and the bright thing to do.

Let me end by restating the importance of seeing things whole, as E.B. White put it, in our approach to learning. We can do so by constantly asking ourselves:

Are we seeing broad and deep, and ensuring equality of opportunity and excellence?

Are we seeing wide, to the community, across the country and outward to the world at large?

Are we seeing forward and preparing for the changes to come?

Are we seeing new things in how we learn about learning, including by heeding the latest brain research? 

Are we seeing within to the quality of life on our campuses, and ensuring they are not only smart but caring places for students?

As trustees of this Ontario’s very important and impressive universities, you are making a real contribution to our learning and well-being. You determine our vision, and I would like to thank you again for your efforts.

Have an enlightening and productive conference.