Toronto, Ontario, Saturday, June 7, 2014

Thank you for inviting me to speak at this important conference. I am delighted to be here among so many friends, both new and old. 

I would like to take this opportunity to ask three questions regarding learning and innovation in Canada, India and the United States.

1. Can we have both equality of opportunity and excellence in our respective countries?

2. What role do our post-secondary institutions play in ensuring this?

3. What can we, as graduates and supporters of IITs, do to further equality of opportunity and excellence?

Note that I said ‘we,’ because I have included myself, as a proud IIT supporter.

During my State visit to India earlier this year, I was delighted to visit IIT Bombay and to serve as an external appraiser of its strategic plan on its 50th anniversary. And during my time as president of the University of Waterloo, and earlier of McGill University, I signed a number of partnership agreements with the Indian Institutes for Technology and gained first-hand knowledge of the outstanding quality of the education they provide.

My response to the first question is yes: we can achieve both equality of opportunity and excellence, and see them as mutually reinforcing values, rather than as opposing ones.

The answer is simple, if by equality of opportunity you intend to ensure that all members of a society can grow their talents to the maximum, and to give these empowered individuals the chance to put their skills to work in order to improve the human condition.

And, of course, drawing on the talents of every member of a society—rich and poor, male and female—allows us to pursue excellence from a substantially larger pool.

Moreover, when excellence is accentuated, the resulting innovations lead to better ways of expanding equality of opportunity.

But achieving both requires passionate, innovative, unselfish human leadership. And that’s my central message to you today.    

Let’s move on to the second question: the role played by universities and learning institutes.

In Canada, the twin values of equality of opportunity and excellence have been most effectively advanced by the country’s public education system, which is highly accessible and of high quality.

Canada’s primary and secondary school systems lead the English-speaking world in the OECD PISA rankings for children aged 9, 12 and 15. Canada also has the highest percentage of tertiary-educated adults in the OECD and the highest participation rate in post-secondary institutions.

One OECD study that I found particularly interesting ranked member nations on accessibility, or 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 ranked number one in terms of how many children equaled or exceeded their parents’ level of education. But for the bottom 20 per cent, we are in the bottom third. This is the very good with the ugly.

At the post-secondary level in India, the IITs are a story unto themselves. They are the most demanding institutions in the world and are therefore establishing a unique global standard of excellence. But India needs more high-quality institutions to continue setting the bar, and to build capacity throughout its educational system in order to dramatically broaden accessibility.

The challenge is to achieve more of this excellence and a much greater degree of equality of opportunity.

How do we contribute to these goals in India and in North America? This brings me to my third question, which is the challenge facing you as IIT graduates.

On this, I would like to make three points.

The first point is that I would like to suggest that you are stewards of your respective IITs.

Let me explain. I was a vice-chancellor for 27 years. At the end of each graduation ceremony, I would ask the graduating students, the following question: who owns the university? The answer of course is that no one does. But you have spent four years of your lives gaining knowledge from the university and contributing to its well-being, so you are now its stewards and representatives. And as stewards, it is your responsibility to improve your institution, to give back to it. To make it better for the students who follow you. Your community has supported you and the taxpayers have shown that they have confidence in you by making a major investment in your future. So be conscious of the public sector, vote in elections and strive to make a difference.

This brings me to my second point, which is that as IIT graduates, you can influence your institution to build capacity at home.

Firstly, by replicating the excellence of the original IITs and building additional Indian institutions of excellence; secondly, by graduating legions of teachers, researchers and academic leaders who will staff these institutions; and thirdly, by engaging them in collaborative teaching, research and technology transfer interactions so that everyone profits.

My third point is that as IIT graduates, you need to promote globalization and an international outlook. You must continue to seek institutional agreements between IITs and Canadian and American schools.

Capacity building, research collaboration and technology transfer ecosystems are all examples of how we can help one another. Remember how the IITs began: each adopted an international partner and took the best comparative practices to build into their domestic experience.

We must encourage ambitious international strategies. There are two that affect Canada that I would like to mention.

The first is the report prepared by Amit Chakma–president of the University of Western Ontario and chair of the Advisory Panel on Canada’s International Education Strategy–which calls for the number of international students in Canada to double by 2022 and for the number of Canadians studying abroad to increase significantly.

Let me quote from the report: “Our vision for Canada: become the international leader in international education in order to attract top talent and prepare our citizens for the global marketplace, thereby providing key building blocks for our future prosperity.” 

Incidentally, Amit is a Bangladeshi by origin who came to Canada for graduate studies and brought his extended family here. His oldest son has just published an article in the journal Nature.

The second international strategy that affects Canada involves Dominic Barton, a Canadian who is the Global Managing Director of McKinsey & Company. He recently headed up a McKinsey study that identified how the internationalization of education, or what I call the diplomacy of knowledge, can benefit nations.

I would like to end these remarks by saying how important individual leadership is, in terms of both giving and receiving, in achieving both equality of opportunity and excellence in education—the ever-giving gift.

Thank you.