Queen's University ain't what it used to be, or should be…

Queen's University ain't what it used to be. Or should be. Being a native Kingstonian who grew up not far from the Queen’s University campus, earned two degrees from that august institution, and spent 28 years working there, I think I have a pretty good perspective on what ails my ol’ alma mater.

News of the university’s financial woes, which have been widely reported in the media, are too complex and varied to dissect here. Sure, the provincial government’s shortsighted, anti-intellectual, and miserly approach to post-secondary funding is an important factors in the problems at Queen’s. But so, too, is the senior administration’s reliance on the tuition dollars that were being squeezed out of foreign students in order to continue doing “business as usual” – expanding in all directions at once. All that aside, I'd argue there are a couple of other, much more fundamental reasons for why Queen's is ailing.

For one, that the university is afflicted with a kind of dementia. Queen's has lost it’s institutional memory and its sense of direction. That’s not surprising because in recent years the university has been run by too many senior administrators who knew little or even nothing about the history and culture of the school or the Kingston community before they got here. 

What’s even worse, adding insult to injury, is that it seems never have occurred to these short-sighted visionaries – or else they simply didn’t care – that what they were doing wasn’t realistic or sustainable. The idea of trying to turn what long had been an elite, smaller-scale undergraduate school – one with an abiding sense of its history, unique identity, and mission – into a world-class center of research and education that would be all things to all people was noble, but unsustainable. It put Queen’s into perpetual competition with the “big boys” – University of Toronto, McGill, the University of British Columbia, and other much larger schools in much larger urban centres. 

Back in the late 1990s and into the early years of the new millennium, Queen’s punched above its weight, muscling its way into the Top Five of the Maclean’s magazine annual rankings of medical doctoral schools. But fast forward to 2024. Canada’s academic landscape is much different than it was a decade or two ago. So, too, so is the university’s financial picture. Not surprisingly, Queen’s has tumbled reputationally — to the point this year it is down to ninth in the Top 10 of the Maclean's rankings of medical doctoral schools. (It was fifth in 2022 and eighth in 2023.)

There’s nothing wrong with aspiring to be better or to grow. Nor is there anything wrong with staying fresh by bringing in some new blood or fresh ideas. That said, there is something wrong – and even ruinous – with forgetting who you really are, where you came from, and what made you special to begin with. Unfortunately, it seems that Queen’s has done all that. 

Adding insult to injury is that what I call “the commodification of education” has taken hold at the university. That’s a highfalutin way of saying that because the school is now being run like a business, degrees are now regarded the same way that widgets are. And so Queen’s has become just another business that’s selling a product. A degree is now something too many students buy in order “to get a good job” when they graduate. Hence the willingness – or is it eagerness? – by senior administration and their bean counters to think about axing courses (and even departments) in the Faculty of Arts and Science. 

I know it sounds quaint to some ears, but when I was a Queen’s undergrad student “away back when,” my professors – yes, professors taught courses, not teaching assistant – advised me and my classmates that they couldn’t teach us everything. The most they could do, they said, was to teach students to think – that is, to ask the right questions, analyze the answers, and make sense of it all. In other words, they taught students lessons that would last a lifetime, not the kind of ephemeral job skills that can and should be learned quicker and cheaper at a community college. 

The price Queen’s has paid a steep price for embracing the corporate approach to learning. It has been harmful financially, reputationally, and in terms of the quality of what used to be called “a Queen’s education.” It’s now hard to argue that Queen’s is offering anything different from what’s on offer at countless other Canadian universities. And by some quality measures, it even looks like Queen’s comes up short.

When Provost/Vice-Principal Academic Matthew Evans recently sent out an email message outlining the senior administration’s strategy for resolving the university’s financial woes, he mentioned his hope that the cost cutting he has in mind will “enable us as a university to focus on building our research capacity and to invest in academic excellence.” Maybe it will. Let’s hope so

But colour me cynical -- I won't argue -- for thinking that any such victory will be pyrrhic, also for noticing that in the wording of Evans’ message, “research capacity” ranks higher on the priorities scale than does teaching. That’s unfortunate because what should be paramount is the getting back to basics. That would mean reversing those priorities, worrying less about research and more about prioritizing the quality of the academic experience students pay for, expect, and deserve to receive when they choose to attend Queen’s.