“Research talent is widely
distributed across the
Canadian university system.”
À mon avis
In my opinion
The NHL view of universities
Is research funding “skewed”
to larger universities?
by Leo Groarke
Leo Groarke is president of
Trent University.
very decade has its trend, and in the
university sector “differentiation” seems
to define the current one. It’s difficult to
take issue with the basic idea: different
institutions should focus on their different strengths. But, this notion has encouraged
some implausible conclusions that warrant
better scrutiny. One of them is the notion that
research (and graduate studies) be privileged at
larger universities.
The issues this conclusion raises are highlighted in a recent article by Dennis L. Murray
et al. in Plos One (and also in the June-July 2016
issue of University Affairs), which claims that the
evaluation of NSERC applications is biased in
favour of larger universities. Its statistical survey
shows “that funding success and grant amounts
… are consistently lower for applicants from
small institutions. This pattern persists across
applicant experience levels, is consistent among
three criteria used to score grant proposals, and
therefore is interpreted as representing system
bias targeting applicants from small institutions.”
In one of his provocative commentaries, Alex
Usher, president of Higher Education Strategy
Associates, has encouraged his readers to read
Murray et al., but not for the reasons the authors
themselves suggest. According to Mr. Usher, the
more plausible explanation for the different
NSERC success rates at small and large institutions is that, “just maybe, faculty research quality
is not randomly distributed. Maybe big rich universities use their resources mainly to attract faculty deemed to have greater research potential.
Maybe they don’t always guess quite right about
who has that potential and who doesn’t, but on
the whole it seems likelier than not that the sys-
tem works more or less as advertised.”
This is an important hypothesis, not because
it is plausible, but because it exposes some deep
prejudices about research at Canadian universi-
ties. I call this the “NHL view,” because it suggests
that the university system operates in the way that
the National Hockey League and other profes-
sional sports do: with major and minor leagues.
The NHL view places large universities in the
majors and smaller universities (of the sort studied in the Murray paper) in the minors when it
comes to research talent and ability. We can see
how badly this misconstrues the way that research
works in Canadian universities by considering
how major and minor leagues work in hockey.
Minor hockey leagues are populated by players who are not ready to play in the NHL. They
sign with a minor league team which is affiliated
with a major league team, in the hopes that they
can make it to the NHL. The salaries of players
in the majors are many times those of minor
leaguers. The latter have short and precarious
careers which consist of short-term contracts.
Does this system of employment compare to
research appointments at Canadian universities?
Hardly. Research in Canadian universities is tied
to tenure-track positions. They go to newly
minted PhDs who are qualified to work at any
university of any size – and not as short-term
appointments, but as permanent positions that
can continue for 30 or 40 years.
Tenure-track salaries at large universities are
not enormously different from salaries at small
universities (when one takes the cost of living in
large cities into account, they are in some ways
lower). As anyone who hires faculty knows, a position’s status as tenure-track or not is a far more
significant component of a position than salary is.
Especially in the situation in which there are
more qualified candidates than there are jobs, faculty go wherever they are able to secure a position
(i.e. to where the jobs are when they graduate). In
situations in which they have a choice, their decisions are influenced by many things: the desire
to live in a particular location, proximity to their
extended family, the fit between them and an academic department, the career opportunities for
their spouse, cost of living and so on.
Not surprisingly, in view of this, research talent
is widely distributed across the Canadian university system. Here and there, institutions – small
as well as large – create unique positions for
research stars, but such positions are a tiny component of the university system, and programs
like the Canada Research Chairs ensure that they
are spread across all kinds of universities.
If Canada is to get the most out of the funding
it provides for research activities, this funding
needs to follow talent. There is no good reason
to believe that some select group of universities
has some kind of systematic advantage in this
regard. The NHL view of Canadian universities
is misleading. Any biases it promotes need to be
rectified if Canada is to make the most of research
activity at its universities.
E
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