As Queen’s unveiled its Bicentennial Vision for 2041, a leaked consultant document obtained by The Journal outlined specific structural changes on a similar timeline.
Announced in the Queen’s Gazette on Jan. 28, the University’s Bicentennial Vision, a guiding document meant to provide Queen’s with an outline as it works towards its 200th birthday in 2041, was released. While the document provides broader goals and themes for the University, The Journal also obtained a leaked consultant document from NDSIK Management Consultants, which provided specific recommendations aimed at restructuring the University ahead of 2041. However, these recommendations are still preliminary and haven’t been established.
The Journal sat down with Principal and Vice-Chancellor Patrick Deane to discuss both the public Bicentennial vision and the leaked consultant document.
Bicentennial Vision
Deane explained that the planning behind the Bicentennial vision was undertaken amidst the issues facing Ontario universities, including government restrictions on international students and having the lowest per capita student funding out of any province. He explained that, given many of the issues facing the University weren’t going to go away, they needed a plan to be sustainable.
“[There was a] shift from acknowledging that we had some immediate financial challenges to recognizing that the financial parameters were unlikely to change all that much,” Deane said, adding they had to consider what a long-term vision for Queen’s should look like. “That’s the shift from the short-term budget discussions, which occurred in 2024, into the Bicentennial Vision discussions, which essentially got underway at the start of 2025,” Deane said.
The document is organized into two main categories. The first is strategic priorities, which are the specific actions the University will take now to make progress in the future. The second is foundational priorities, which the document defines as “the institutional capacities and conditions we must strengthen to support these actions and to prepare the University for future initiatives as priorities are renewed.”
One of the priorities in the document is to “concentrate our research where we can lead nationally and globally,” with Deane elaborating in his interview that this relates to the Strategic Research Plan.
“You do have to support research across the board, but if you wish to be a University that has international impact, you’re going to have to take note of some areas where you’ve got particular strength, and strategically invest to build strength in those areas,” he said.
He explained one example of this is Queen’s strength in particle astrophysics research, but added that research focuses can also be dynamic, explaining that “between now and 2041, a lot of change can happen.”
Another priority was to “integrate digital, data, and AI fluency into our academic mission,” with Deane expanding by explaining they’re exploring the creation of a centralized AI and computing support hub as part of its Bicentennial Vision, intended to make AI a tool across disciplines rather than just a standalone area of study.
He said the aim is to shift toward a model where students and researchers in all fields—including the humanities—have access to and training in these technologies. Deane said the hub could operate either as a central unit working with faculties or through direct integration into program design, allowing students to use AI within their discipline.
“What I’m not anticipating is technology becoming a subject in and for itself that dominates Queen’s by 2041, but that we’ll have assimilated these very exciting technological developments in order to advance the broader educational and research mission of the University,” he said.
Also labelled as one of its priorities, the University plans to “align enrolment, programs, and resources for academic excellence and long-term sustainability.” Deane expanded, explaining, “one shouldn’t understand crudely to mean ‘we’re just going to do a few things, and everything else is going to be dropped.’ No, that’s not the intention.”
He explained that the idea behind this part of the vision is recognizing it’s important to be aware of where there’s demand for building, but that it shouldn’t be a “zero-sum game.”
“Just because you’re building strength in one area doesn’t mean you have no interest in others,” Deane said. “Let’s say there’s high demand for STEM disciplines among students, and let’s say the institution has a great deal of strength in the sciences and in engineering. Yes, we’re likely to attract more students in those fields, and yes, we’re likely to see more research activity in those fields. But that doesn’t mean other fields will necessarily atrophy or shrink or disappear.”
Consultant document
The documents obtained from The Journal included a PowerPoint presentation about the state of Ontario and Canadian universities more broadly, as well as five double-sided pages of a report provided by the consultant. The first part of the report stemmed from a Provost Retreat that took place on Jan. 31, 2024, with one of the document’s express purposes to “discuss the potential size and shape of Queen’s in the future.”
Consultant document overview. PHOTO BY JASHAN DUA
Deane confirmed this retreat took place, adding it was part of many conversations about the state of the University that took place in 2024. He added that these discussions were held to look at immediate financial issues, adding that the Bicentennial discussions that took place in 2025 were longer-term, explaining there was “a big shift” between these discussions.
“The earlier process [in early 2024] was a very interesting and helpful discussion of some of the challenges we were facing and some options we might have in the face of those challenges, but they weren’t yet seen in the context of an integrated vision or our longer-term aspirations,” Deane said.
He clarified that the discussions had during this retreat were preliminary to the official Bicentennial Vision, although recognizing that much of this discussion may recur when working on plans for the future.
“Of course, some of them [the recommendations] will likely recur, but they may recur in a different context, in a different framework,” Deane said.
The retreat involved interviews with undefined university stakeholders, which the document states informed five key takeaways: reducing the relative size of the Faculty of Arts and Science (FAS), adjusting the balance between domestic and international enrolment, considering expanded virtual offerings, prioritizing growth in professional schools and master’s programs, and placing greater emphasis on research.
On the reduction of the FAS, Deane referred back to his earlier comments about it not being a zero-sum game in his eyes, where growth in one area doesn’t mean the humanities are being left behind, arguing that numbers alone don’t reflect a discipline’s value to the University’s mission.
He noted that student demand naturally fluctuates over time, leading to growth in some areas and decline in others.
“A decline in student numbers in an area doesn’t tell you anything about the inherent value of that academic area,” Deane said.
Part of the document includes a plan to reshape the University’s current structure. This would include bumping the total student population to 40,000 by 2040. Undergraduate program offerings would be simplified into six programs, including Science, Arts, Commerce, Computing, Engineering, and Health, with each having 3,000 students each, totaling 18,000 undergraduates. An additional 12,000 students would be split among graduate and professional programs.
The remaining 10,000 students would attend virtually, through a new school called the School of Professional and Continuing Education (SPACE). This school would offer micro-credentials and other “life-long learning opportunities,” however, details of these offerings weren’t specified in the document.
SPACE rollout proposition. PHOTO BY JASHAN DUA
Deane explained that the idea for this school emerged in early 2024, out of the recognition that the University needed other forms of revenue, but also out of the broader social trend of lifelong learning. He explained that while there is discussion on implementing this school, it has to do two things.
“It’s got to enhance the mainstream academic work we do, and it’s got to be to a high quality and high standard, otherwise we’d wouldn’t put the Queen’s name on it,” Deane said. He added that he doesn’t see this as selling short their history of offering undergraduate and postgraduate education, but that you can do both.
He also added that this extra revenue from the new school can provide resources for the traditional, for-credit learning.
Deane also addressed the reworking of undergraduate faculties, acknowledging that with the FAS’s current undergraduate population of 9,500 students, this proposed change would effectively be a reduction of 3,500 for the FAS by limiting both the Arts stream and Science stream to 3,000 each.
“I’ve had no part in recent discussions along those lines [of implementing these changes], which isn’t to say the University might decide in three or four years to do such a thing,” Deane said. “Although some of the ideas that came up in the earlier discussions will, in some altered way, have a place in the Bicentennial vision, many won’t. I mean, one always hopes one’s most recent thoughts are better than one’s earlier thoughts.”
Proposed faculty structure. PHOTO BY JASHAN DUA.
He added that the Bicentennial vision is still meant to be the guide, adding that if these ideas come up, they “would come up in a very modified form”
A separate part of the consultant document questioned whether faculties “would require departments if there are no programs to align to departments.” In response, Deane explained that during consultation for the Bicentennial Vision, there was a consensus that there needs to be interdisciplinary work as humanities problems are multifaceted.
“The line of thinking, which I think gathered quite a lot of traction during the Bicentennial consultations, was that we are a little too boxed in by the assumption of disciplinary boundaries, and that it might be helpful to think of an academic future in which what a student chose to study would not be shaped quite so much by an administrative structure in the University,” Deane said.
He added that this could mean more holistic approaches, where he explained a student who studies cancer research would be able to study its biomedical aspects along with its social implications.
“There’s a powerful wish to strengthen interdisciplinary opportunities for students in the university and in their programs and their program choices. That could be done without altering departmental structures, it could. It could be done by not altering the way in which money flows in the institution, but it’d be difficult to do it that way,” he said.
He explained that a fixed administrative structure by departments could become an obstacle but added the “University would’ve to decide how much the University wishes to modify the budget model so that there are financial incentives to departments to offer interdisciplinary programs and to encourage faculty members to engage in interdisciplinary activity.”
The second part of the document discusses a separate meeting on May 24, 2024, named the Strategy Session for Senior Leaders. At this session, there was an activity in which participants were given balls that represented university resources and were asked to allocate their balls across bins corresponding to different disciplines, including social sciences, health, science and engineering, and arts and humanities.
The exercise showed a shift in prioritization away from the social sciences and arts and humanities towards health, while allocations to science and engineering remained unchanged.
During this exercise, two of the groups declined to participate, putting their balls to the side and not into any of the bins.
Ball exercise breakdown. PHOTO BY JASHAN DUA
A full compilation of the consultant document can be found here.
Tags
bicentennial, Bicentennial Vision, consultant, NDSIK, Patrick Deane
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