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As the current president of the University of Waterloo, David Johnson has a strong vision for the future of higher education and the necessity to fully fund and benchmark Canada as a leader in research and innovation as the following excerpt from my book The Seven Strategies of Master Leaders: Featuring Key Insights from 32 of Canada’s Top Leaders demonstrates.
If you take the public universities in Canada and you exclude the private universities in the States, such as Harvard, Stanford, Yale, Princeton, etc., and you compare the public universities in Canada with the public universities in the states, you will find that Canadian universities are funded at 60% of the level of the public universities in the States. This is why our Canadian universities have larger classes and more multiple choice exams. It also shows up in NESS, the National Student Survey of Engagement where the US scores higher than Canada and the ability to teach in Canada is less concentrated because there are more students per professor. The final thing I say when talking to my university friends is that it is instructive to compare UW to MIT and the University of Michigan because we want to be their Canadian equivalents. At the UW the faculty student ratio is 27 to 1, at the University of Michigan it is 10 to 1, and at MIT it is 4 to 1. If you compare dollars from tuition fees, operating grants and private income, the UW is funded at $11,000 per student per year, Michigan gets $27,000 and MIT $100,000. As I tell my friends in business, imagine yourself selling your product or services and your competition has 10 times the resources you do.
The good side of that story is that UW is already the equal to the University of Michigan and MIT in many of our programs. That means that we are being as efficient as possible with what we have. Therefore, even a small incremental investment in us is very appealing because it has a very good ROI (Return on Investment) so every additional dollar spent on higher education would go a long way.
This excerpt illustrates the types of pertinent questions David Johnson asks, both of himself and others to benchmark the University of Waterloo. He then uses the answers to those questions to develop credibility as a leader and to make a strong case for bringing his vision that Canada should be a world leader in higher education, innovation and research by 2020.
To find out more about how master Canadian Leaders are inspired by vision and fueled by passion, attend the 1st Halifax Leadership Symposium on September 28, 2010 at Pier 21 ─ The Future of Leadership in Atlantic Canada: Challenges, Opportunities and Innovative Solutions. Our keynote speakers are Françoise Morissette author of Made in Canada Leadership. Françoise is the director of a pan Canadian leadership institute to help raise the level of leadership in Canada by sharing leadership best practices from across the country. Cora Tsouflidou, the founder of Cora’s Restaurants, who turned a café in Montreal into 120 restaurants across Canada. Chris Power, president and CEO of Capital Health is talking about the future of health care and Phil Fontaine the former National Chief of the Assembly of First Nations, is speaking about the type of inclusiveness we need today and will even need more of in the future because the Conference Board of Canada says that by the year 2031 we will have 23 people in Atlantic Canada to do the work that 50 people do today. For more information and to register at the early bird discount rate, visit www.futureofleadership.dal.ca. The book The Seven Strategies of Master Leaders is available at independent bookstores and at Chapters and Chapters online and at www.BradMcRae.com
Great article!
wopdedo