At this time of year the academic community—students, faculty and staff—typically finds that its horizons have closed in unnaturally.
For students the focus must be preparing for exams; for faculty it’s marking the last assignment that commands attention, or perhaps drafting and grading exams; for staff, to conclude the year involves superhuman efforts on many fronts, often under pressure from unrealistic deadlines.
The experience can be stifling of course, and members of those other two groups understand very well the student impulse to cast off winter coats and take to the streets as the weather warms up and academic obligations diminish. This year, however, it’s not clear that all will see or will be inclined to share such exuberance.
For some, the coming of examinations and other year-end exercises may have provided a welcome relief from having to deal with the big issues that surround them, not only here at Queen’s but in higher education and in our society generally. As more immediate challenges begin to wane, it’s possible that for many people the big questions will be felt reasserting themselves.
What questions are these? Within the context of our institution, possibly the greatest is the financial situation in which the University finds itself; the others proceed from it and include the need for major curriculum and organizational change as Queen’s seeks to reconfigure itself and its mission in a more sustainable manner. Faculty are engaged in the latter project with increasing intensity, not always with unqualified enthusiasm, and students—both undergraduate and graduate—are being caught up in the debate, not always constructively.
This situation is difficult and regrettable for many, and for others it’s at best the cause of ambivalent feelings; for all too few, unfortunately, it’s exciting. There’s still a powerful tendency in universities to view any change as loss. A cancelled course, a modification to the format employed in past years: these are understandably viewed by some students and faculty as evidence that we’re falling further and further away from the standards and values of the past. Particularly from the student perspective, which is necessarily limited to a span of relatively few years, small changes can become heavily freighted in this way.
It’s important, however, to guard against this tendency. First, it is a mistake to think that changes of the sort we’re witnessing are unprecedented either at Queen’s or other universities in general. Questioning and change are normally taken to be signs of academic health—except, that is, when it appears we’re being forced by financial circumstances to think about our subjects differently. The presence of a material incentive doesn’t, however, vitiate the need for questioning and change or render the process of academic self-interrogation less objectively valuable. More than that, such questioning is a precondition for academic health.
Consequently, while there’s indeed much that’s regrettable about the fiscal situation in higher education generally and at Queen’s in particular, the opportunity to apply our creative and analytical powers to the curriculum in order to seek its improvement is surely invigorating.
If students are looking for confirmation of continuing academic and intellectual health at Queen’s University, they will do well to look not at what’s in or out of the calendar, or at what remains of past glory in any field; instead they should turn their gaze on the academic planning process which is currently underway. The vigour with which their professors are engaged in that process will tell them what they need to know about the strength of their university. Furthermore, the extent to which students themselves become engaged in the process will enhance the enduring value of its outcome.
It’s time to open up our horizons. We’re entering a time of regeneration.
Patrick Deane is Vice-Principal (Academic) of Queen’s University. He will be McMaster University’s president starting July 1.
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