Queen’s Bicentennial Vision: From Liberal Arts University to Technical School

The murky process guiding the administration’s drive to restructure Queen’s got a bit more concrete last week when Principal Deane released a discussion paper, Queen’s Bicentennial Vision, in an email to all members of the university community. 

Readers who attended the December Senate meeting, where the Principal faced pressure to reveal the administration’s plans, will not be surprised to learn that the paper centers on his perception that Queen’s needs to increase STEM and business enrolments. Given provincially imposed constraints on overall enrolment, the likely upshot of this vision is the transfer of seats from the humanities and social sciences to STEM and business disciplines. The Principal’s stance on this issue is most clearly articulated on page 11, where he writes:

If we now acknowledge that the drift towards STEM is not a contemporary aberration but a longstanding fact of higher education in this country, the time is surely right for the arts, social sciences, and humanities, in particular, to ponder the lineaments of a possible future defined not by alienation from and reaction against that drift, but by a recognition of their continuity with it. As part of the present visioning process, therefore, we should convene colleagues from the arts, social sciences, and humanities, to consider positive options. A brilliant future for those fields is in no way incompatible with strength and growth in areas such as engineering, business, and science. 

In short: those in the social sciences and humanities should get in line and prepare for shrinking resources unless they can figure out how to service other faculties.

But what of this supposed “drift towards STEM?” The Principal seemed taken aback at Senate when challenged on his claim that demand for humanities and social science degrees is falling, but his case is made no stronger in the Bicentennial Vision. Indeed, the premise of his argument seems to rest on a single statistic found on page 6, where he writes that 20th-century postwar trends continue, with “enrolment in STEM in Canada since 2010 increasing by 28% amongst domestic and by 22% amongst international students, and enrolments in the arts and humanities declining over the same period by 24% and 41% respectively.”

In making the case for a drastic change to Queen’s’ educational mission based on flimsy and decontextualized evidence, the Principal inadvertently highlights the need for exactly the kind of strong social science and humanities education threatened by the transformation of the university into a technical college.

Here, we highlight three problems with the Principal’s analysis. Not coincidentally, these are some of the most common mistakes novice social science students make when they first learn research methods: disregard of context, cherry-picking evidence, and over-generalization of conclusions. 

1) Lack of Context

As a university administrator, the Principal should know that enrolment is not solely (or even mostly) driven by student demand for a subject (nor should it be, but that’s for another post). Instead, government policies that allocate seats and determine grant amounts shape university decisions on how to distribute enrolments. Institutions do not just wait to see who applies to determine how to allocate seats; instead, they make decisions about allocations and acceptances in response to financial incentives provided by the province.

If Queen’s were to transfer seats away from the humanities to engineering, for example, it would accelerate the trend to which the Principal claims to be neutrally responding and result in a self-fulfilling prophecy. Another university could observe this trend and follow suit, all in the absence of the influence of student demand. 

By relying on decontextualized numbers without analyzing the underlying processes that produce them–-that is, ignoring concepts covered in most required courses in Queen’s social science programs–-the Principal has jumped to a conclusion. In so doing, he misrepresents (intentionally or not) how the higher education system functions, with potentially grave consequences.

2) Cherry Picking

The trends that the Principal reports do not bear out across all disciplines, either in the areas he wishes to diminish or the ones he wishes to grow. Using the same Statistics Canada table referenced in the discussion paper, we can see that between 2010 and 2022, enrolment in the social sciences in Canada increased by 14.2%, while enrolments in business (curiously lumped in with STEM by the Principal) increased by a similar margin (16.2%). Yet, one gets listed as an area in decline and another as a source of growth. This selective use of data paints an incomplete picture of the trends that the Principal states are guiding the administration. It is unclear to QCAA if this cherry-picking is based on simple ignorance (and a case for better social science training) or a manipulative use of high-level statistics. 

3) Over-Generalization 

The Principal does not explain his choice to use one highly aggregated, national-level statistic to make decisions about the future of Queen’s. What may be the case at the national level may look quite different at the local level. Why would he not use the university’s own data on applications to our programs? Why wouldn’t he analyze the reputation of Queen’s, and its strengths and weaknesses, to help shape its future direction? 

This refusal is odd. The university should have access to detailed data on student demand and be able to draw on internal expertise to analyze trends in applications (rather than enrolment). Yet, when it comes to data for this exercise, there seems to have been no effort to analyze the reputation of Queen’s and the strengths upon which it can build. Instead, the entire document relies on one Statistics Canada table. This is clearly inadequate. 

It is also hard for us to believe, given how course sizes in many social science and humanities programs have been growing steadily over the past fifteen years and classrooms are bursting at the seams. 

The Real Reason for Reallocating Seats to STEM

The Queen’s community is not naive, and it is clear that the real driver of this process is neither student demand nor societal needs. On page 11, the Principal acknowledges the cold hard truth, writing that “growth in these areas will have a beneficial impact on university resources, government funding on a per-student basis being considerably higher in STEM subjects than in others. This is a very significant consideration, because the overall projection for support from government in the coming years is otherwise bleak and unpromising.” 

This passage helps explain why the Principal describes the social sciences as declining, whereas business, which has nearly identical growth trends but charges higher tuition, as growing. The proposed reallocation of seats to STEM and business would at least in part be an artifact of the stark tuition differential between FAS and other faculties and schools. If all faculties and schools charged similar tuition, it is unlikely we would be having this conversation about seat reallocation.

If the administration wants to have this conversation, it should be honest about the premise and include a transparent assessment of the university’s financial picture, as QCAA has repeatedly urged. 

Other Points of Note:

• On page 8, the university affirms that it will be directing resources towards capital investments, which aligns with its decision to move funds out of the operating budget into capital over the past few years.
• The Principal does acknowledge the “need to rethink aspects of the present budget model and the mechanism by which revenues are distributed across the whole institution” (p. 12). This is an important process to monitor as it drives where financial pressures are experienced across the university.
• The letter describes the need for a School for Professional and Continuing Education as a source of new revenues. Worryingly, it also notes that the school would “exist as an arm’s-length organization outside of normal academic operations” (p. 12). What this means is unclear.
• The Principal seems to want to revisit a contentious bargaining issue from the last round of negotiations with QUFA, writing, “all tenure-track faculty will teach and have research programs funded by external agencies” (p. 7).

Readers are encouraged to share their own thoughts with the Principal. We strongly suggest responding by email rather than to the pre-determined questions.

Please share your responses (anonymously) with QCAA by cutting and pasting them into this form.

QCAA will use your feedback to help facilitate information sharing and hold the administration accountable.