Former Attorney General, Geoff Plant, Q.C. was commissioned by BC’s Premier and Minister of Advanced Education to prepare a comprehensive report and recommendations on higher education in British Columbia. The long awaited Campus 2020 report was released on April 23, 2007. It is the first such report since John MacDonald’s report, Higher Education in British Columbia and a Plan for the Future in 1962. Campus 2020 acknowledges the ambitious goal of our current government to make BC “the best educated, most literate jurisdiction” in North America by 2015. The report documents the long road to be travelled to achieve this objective. In view of the ambitious targets which BC has established for itself, the status quo is clearly not adequate. It is therefore not surprising that among the 52 recommendations contained in Campus 2020, many are far reaching and some will not be popular with everyone.

The recommendations contained in Campus 2020 form an integrated strategy to achieve two imperatives identified by Plant: namely to provide universal access to higher education and to achieve excellence in the endeavour.

Many of the recommendations in Campus 2020 will be a challenge to implement. For instance, Plant recommends the establishment of a Higher President’s Council (comprised of the presidents of all post secondary institutions in the Province) to facilitate collaborative, coordinated planning. He also recommends the creation of a Higher Education Board, which will include representatives of the post-secondary sector but “will be controlled by representatives of the larger community”, with various backgrounds, such as business, labour, First Nations and multi-cultural heritage. These provincial-wide agencies would be complemented by five Regional Learning Councils which will provide for more local input and facilitate the integration of academic institutions within their local regions. These three new agencies will be charged with a demanding range of duties including, the coordination of objectives and resources, gathering of information, development of a provincial database, development of strategies to integrate First Nation and “first generation” learners into the mainstream of higher education etc.

No one can argue with the objective of creating a framework for more collaboration and communication among the institutions which deliver advanced education and their stakeholders. However, it will be a challenge to create a framework (both legislative and administrative) which would permit these new agencies to do the work expected from them. In particular, it is not clear how they will interface with the Ministry of Advanced Education or how the individuals (particularly the institutional Presidents) who comprise these agencies will find the time to undertake the tasks assigned to them. Nor is it clear how decisions made by such agencies will be translated into action by institutions which have traditionally operated on a fairly autonomous basis. Finally, how will decisions made in these agencies translate into funding decisions at the institutional level?

Other challenges raised by Campus 2020 are the need to develop clear standards and roles for the institutions which deliver higher education in BC. Plant notes that Canada is alone among 30 major developed countries in not having a formal system of institutional accreditation. Plant recommends that BC should lead the way in Canada by establishing a province-wide system of accreditation by 2010. Furthermore, BC should ensure that among its publicly funded institutions, the roles of the various institutions should be better defined. He recommends that only four of BC’s institutions (namely UBC, SFU, UVic and UNBC) be recognized as research-intensive universities. He proposes the establishment of a Georgia Straight Research Cluster, comprised of UBC, SFU and UVic, which would receive 95% of provincial research funding. These universities would not only receive the lion’s share of research funding, but as a corollary, would also undertake the lion’s share of graduate programs and would be the only institutions which can offer doctoral programs. Of the 2,500 new graduate spaces which have been committed in BC, all of them would be distributed among UBC, SFU and UVic. UNBC will be a “regional research university with an emphasis on teaching excellence from a uniquely northern perspective” (apparently, rather like the regional universities discussed below).

Further delineation of institutional roles would involve the abolition of university colleges and the creation of “regional universities” (namely, Thompson Rivers University and the newly designated Malaspina University, Kwantlen University and Fraser Valley University). These institutions would be “teaching-intensive, regional learning institutions”, where scholarly research would be incidental to the teaching mandate. In addition to offering baccalaureate and some masters degrees, regional universities would continue to offer post-secondary and adult basic education and training certificates and diplomas. Regional universities would only be permitted to establish new degree programs with approval of the Minister (subject always to the DQAB process).

The institutions which have raised the loudest objection to Campus 2020 are the colleges. Plant states that these institutions should continue their mandate of providing basic education and career and vocational training. However, in order to efficiently distribute resources and ensure “focus of purpose” he recommends that the Minister remove the authority to designate degrees at the college level. He proposes that the concept of the “applied degree” should be abolished and that colleges wanting to offer four-year programs “would do so in collaboration with and under the auspices of a regional or provincial university”. On May 2, 2007, in response to the strenuous objections raised to these recommendations, Minister Murray Coell advised that at the present time “there will be no change in policy with respect to degree granting at Colleges in BC”.

Finally, Campus 2020 acknowledges the existence of six special purpose institutions, namely Royal Roads University, BCIT, Emily Carr Institute of Art and Design, the Justice Institute, Nicola Valley Institute of Technology and the Institute of Indigenous Government. While this group of institutions is identified by Plant, little is said about them other than that British Columbians feel that they serve a clear and important purpose; that they should “continue their focus as teaching-intensive facilities whose “region” happens to be the entire province of British Columbia”, and that current funding models for these institutions should be reviewed.

Campus 2020 contains many recommendations on how to enhance access to higher education across all regions of BC. The establishment of Regional Learning Councils is one step. Another is the establishment of the BC Learning Gateway to provide “new, integrated methods of accessing student services, the learning resources and credentials needed to enrol, study and succeed in a high-quality post-secondary system”. The most important feature of this gateway will be the existing web portal administered by BCCampus. BCCampus will play a critical role in providing access to and coordinating program applications for courses and financial assistance across the Province, and in delivering information and advice to students and compiling data on student requirements and trends. BCCampus will also be a tool which high school counsellors and the students themselves can use to inform themselves the best available educational opportunities. Related use of technology would involve increased access to higher learning through the expansion of distance learning online and the creation of a secure database where the academic achievements and credentials of individual students in all programs attended by them could be recorded and accessed in personal “portfolios”. BCCampus will establish “Knowledge BC” as a “clearing house for centralized access to the diverse research centres, agencies and institutes operating within BC post-secondary institutions”.

Campus 2020 contains many other important findings and recommendations, including with respect to a review of the Private Career Training Institutions Act and better regulation and accreditation of education provided by the private sector; on how to expand the existing BC transfer system to institutions which are not now covered by it; on how to better attract and integrate international students and capitalize on the credentials brought to BC by immigrants; a modified cap on tuition increases, linked to increases of “cost of living” in the education sector; on the elimination of tuition on basic adult education; on making funding available for all students to pursue a higher education on a “needs” basis, etc. Campus 2020 recognizes the importance of funding on all fronts, and that if its recommendations are to be achieved and BC’s ambitious objectives to be met, significant investments in higher education will be required. In particular, Campus 2020 recommends that by 2010, BC should be among the three highest spending provinces on research and innovation.

In the words of Prof. Stephen Toope, President and Vice Chancellor of UBC (Vancouver Sun; May 2, 2007), Campus 2020 is an “audacious plan for the future of learning and research in British Columbia”. Geoff Plant’s recommendations are sweeping and challenging. Some of them (in particular, relating to degree granting) may be expected to have immediate implications regarding enrolment within many of BC’s institutions, which institutions are currently completing their budgets based on the status quo. Whether the Campus 2020 recommendations will be adopted (or more accurately, to what extent and how quickly) remains to be seen, but if the Provincial government has the will to undertake the recommendations contained in Campus 2020, there are sure to be many changes in higher learning in BC in the next several years.

For further information, please contact Brock Johnston, or any other member of Clark Wilson LLP’s Higher Learning Practice Group.