October 27, 2009 News

Concordia president calls for a university ‘reset’

Aims for private donors, American-style tuition and community involvement

by Justin Giovannetti

Concordia President Judith Woodsworth, pictured in her office, has served in her current role for just over a year. PHOTO TERRINE FRIDAY

“The student financial assistance regime in this country is so complicated that people can’t figure out their way through it.” —Concordia President Judith Woodsworth

Concordia President Judith Woodsworth told the Canadian Club of Montreal on Oct. 19 that Canada’s universities need to be part of the post-recession “reset” of society.

“I was using that as an image to say that if you are going to have a reset there should be a third player, which would be universities,” said Woodsworth. “I think that people don’t take enough advantage of universities because they have typically seen them as a drain on taxpayers’ dollars.

“They don’t understand that universities contribute a lot to the economy, [and] what they contribute to knowledge and culture is important for the development of a local economy.”
Woodsworth said that education, especially post-secondary education, is not a priority for government investment. She identified private donors as an important source of funding in a “reset” world.

“We as a university need to raise money privately from our donors,” she said. “We have done well raising money for bursaries and scholarships, but we need more, especially for graduate students.

“If we can get to the point where we have enough funding to support students who are really in need and charge tuition to the ones who have the money, that would be the best solution.”

The president later asserted that the American model would be a good model for Concordia. All students at American universities pay a flat tuition, while those with financial difficulties are subsidized by the schools.

“The government has to help out, with grants and loans that are forgivable. If you graduate and you don’t have a job, they write off your loan,” said Woodsworth. She said she feels the current financial assistance program run by the federal and provincial governments is too burdensome for many students, calling it “very complicated.”

“The student financial assistance regime in this country is so complicated that people can’t figure out their way through it on their own,” said Woodsworth. “It discourages people from poorer families, [students] who in grade eight or nine think that going to university is a rich man’s dream.”

Woodsworth nonetheless identified what she called “a cultural problem” with private-based investment.

“In Canada, fundraising is much newer. When we phone our graduates we are told, ‘You expect me to give you money when I paid for my education?’ We get that attitude,” said Woodsworth, who added that building a base of private donors was one of her goals.

Apart from funding issues, Woodsworth said she also planned to develop the things that make Concordia distinctive, especially in the area of community involvement.

“One of the pillars of the strategic plan is community involvement and social responsibility,” said Woodsworth.
“The reason we put it there is not because this is something new that we want to strive for, but because this is part of our tradition.”

To help Concordia students, Woodsworth said that she had directed the university to set up a centralized volunteer bureau and to create a new transcript that listed experiences and involvement at Concordia. This transcript would accompany the current academic transcript. Although it would serve the same role as a CV, Woodsworth said that it would be more “official.”

A final project would be to improve students’ experiences through smaller classrooms and a more targeted education. “We said, ‘How can we make sure that even in the big classes the students have a small class experience?’” said Woodsworth. “So we are going to have a couple of pilot projects where we try to achieve that.”