PhD » Ren Thomas

Elite? or just educated?

Having spent some time working in the US and frequently immersed in American academic journals and conferences, I am well aware that there is a latent anti-intellectual bias that tends to rear its head during, oh…say national elections, or on the eve of major policy reform. Canadians, apparently, share this apprehension of “minority elites”.

The recent media storm over the Canadian census long form (see my previous post) has ignited a seemingly latent populace that believes that research, and researchers themselves, are pointless exercises in readin’, writin’, book-learnin’ and other geeky pursuits that don’t matter: that data will only be used in order to harass and over-tax the less-educated, privacy-minded general public. (Have a look at some of the articles posted in every major Canadian news outlet concerning the recent Census developments, and more to the point, have a look at some of the comments the “general public” posted.) But it’s not just your “average Canadians” who question the educated population. In today’s Globe and Mail (“Tories stall census probe, ask to hear from average Canadians”), Industry Minister Tony Clement has “already dismissed the controversy as one that only occupies “some of the elites in our country,” a phrase he also used when Canadian academics criticized the federal government’s decision to prorogue Parliament.

Maybe in countries where a university education costs more than a Bentley, it would be correct to state that educated people are a bunch of rich snobs who might be a tad removed from the fray (I said maybe). The vast majority of Canadian universities are public schools, meaning they have government-subsidized tuitions that are considerably lower than their American counterparts. Although tuitions have risen steadily in the last fifteen years or so, Canadian student loans are still readily available to most students. The Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) offers fellowships for Masters and PhD students. Admittedly, these have become rarer in recent years due to the Harper government’s decision to prioritize PhD topics directly related to the economy, and the National Sciences and Engineering Research Council (NSERC) just announced it would drop its Doctoral Fellowship program this year. However, it would seem that funding scarcity hasn’t had much of an effect on our already high education levels.

Higher education is fairly well-distributed among gender, ethnic groups and income levels in Canada. During the 1930s, a quarter of Canadian women were university educated, and to look at graduate schools now you’d be hard-pressed to find a majority of men in any discipline: women have out-numbered men in university admissions since 1981. In the 2006 Census, 25% of the Canadian population had a university degree higher than Bachelors level. By the way, this is lower than the 31% of Americans with this level of education. Almost half of the Canadian population (49%) has a college diploma, trade certification, or university degree. Of OECD countries, Canada has the highest percentage of the population (from 25 to 64 years old) with a post-secondary education (46%), slightly higher than the Japan (40%) and the US (39%), and considerably higher than the OECD average of 26%.

Many immigrants enter the country with educations far superior to those born in Canada. And because the vast majority of population growth in Canada is due to immigration, these university-educated immigrants have a major impact on our cities, our labour market, and our education systems. In 2006, 51% of recent immigrants to Canada had university degrees, compared to 19% of the Canadian-born population. Immigrants also out-perform native-born Canadians in prose, document literacy, numeracy and problem-solving, according to the International Adult Literacy and Skills Survey. Even more importantly, immigrants raised in China, India, or the Philippines (Canada’s three largest source countries for immigrants) know the importance of education and instill it in their children. Let me be clear: it is well known in the poorer parts of the world that education offers an escape route out of poverty. In most cases, the only way out. Many of my classmates at the University of Toronto were the children of immigrants who had only been able to complete high school educations or, occasionally, community college. We were the first generation to attend community colleges and universities en masse, and it was expected that we do so, because our parents could not afford to go themselves when they were our age. Despite their scrimping and saving, many of us were unable to pay tuition without government-subsidized public schools, government-funded loans, scholarships and fellowships.

While a university attendance is lower among the low-income population, Statistics Canada published a study in 2007 that found lower rates of attendance were due to differences in academic performance, parents’ level of education, parents’ expectations, the high school attended, and other such factors. Only 9.5% of the youth in the study reported that financial constraints were a barrier to university attendance. While this is still cause for concern, it is somewhat reassuring that the rapid ascent of tuitions in the 1990s have not have more serious effects.

I’m not sure that it’s accurate to describe this one-quarter of the Canadian population with Bachelors degrees as elite, or “the most powerful, best educated or best trained group in society” (Cambridge Dictionary). Can the half of the population with post-secondary educations, or the half of recent immigrants with university degrees, all be considered elites? While there are some groups in Canada who are under-represented in higher education (only 8% of Aboriginals have university degrees, but 41% have post-secondary educations), we are generally an educated bunch.

Perhaps that’s the real crisis in the Harper government: realizing yet again that Canadians aren’t as dumb as his 2008 re-election might suggest. First, we rose up in the tens of thousands to protest proroguing Parliament, and now that over 200 groups have protested the removal of the Census long form, he’s had to personally speak out on what he probably considered a minor technical issue that would only concern “elites”. After both of these crises, the Conservatives dropped in the polls, creating considerable distress for Harper’s minority Conservatives. An educated populace is a problem when your government acts more like a monarchy than a democratically-elected minority government that could topple at any time.

I can’t believe you didn’t know this, but…

Having decided to go back to school after working for five years, I am sometimes amazed at my fellow students’ lack of knowledge in terms of job searching, interviewing, and preparing resumés. Both Masters and PhD students alike seem to need a fair amount of guidance on these topics, and there are certainly a lot of graduate workshops covering them. This indicates two things to me: first of all, these people have never worked, and this fact is acknowledged by the university and faculties. Secondly, these people have never had to work for financial reasons. This is staggering, considering the average age in the Masters degree at our school is mid-20s, while it’s more like low-30s in the PhD. I mean, I know BC hasn’t seen a recession since 1981, but still…I have met several people who never worked a day in their lives and were in their mid-20s, and many others who want to “enjoy their summer” rather than work. [Note: The last time I "enjoyed a summer" was 1990].

A few of my disturbing realizations:

There is information available online [seemingly underused] on all these topics.
There is a great deal of discussion about CVs versus resumés, for no apparent reason.
Most people have no idea how to write a cover letter because they’ve written very few of them, if any.
Most grad students actually need little tips like “You must ask your references for permission if you plan to use them as a reference” and “you should tailor the resumé and cover letter to the job”. This is equivalent to the masters student who still doesn’t know how to write an academic paper.

Most of my friends back in Ontario have had active resumés since high school. Most of my classmates in my undergraduate degree worked in the summers, if they were lucky. Then again, I started school in 1995 during one of the worst recessions in recent history, and people were practically begging for jobs. This meant sending out thirty or forty or resumés, and making follow-up calls to at least ten of them before you got any response. So let’s just say we were all fairly proficient at resumé writing.

We also didn’t limit ourselves to posted jobs. Since it was the recession, we had to knock on a lot of doors, some of which remained closed. We sought out jobs through our social contacts, by writing to companies we wanted to work for, and by any other method possible. Naturally this doesn’t work in every industry; landscape architecture is populated by small firms that typically don’t post job openings because they’d be inundated with calls and resumés. Obviously municipalities, provincial governments, and major corporations don’t accept resumés if they aren’t hiring; you usually have to cite a competition number to apply for a job. However, we were fairly aggressive about job searching and networking (some were a little too aggressive in my opinion!) because it was necessary in that economic environment. You do need to know what’s out there: what are the places you’d most like to work? How many people work there? What projects do they work on? Social events, lectures in our areas of expertise, and workshops offered by the licensing body [for us it was the Ontario Association of Landscape Architects] also worked for meeting people in the field. I was recently at a social event at University of Toronto that included planning firms and planning students, and given the low rate of job vacancies, the students were pretty strident and focused even though the evening was billed as the “spring social.” We have a Women in Planning social event in Vancouver where people meet over drinks and chat about what’s going on in the field.

Back in the ’90s, we didn’t trouble ourselves with little details like the difference between a CV and a resumé. It’s a pretty simple difference anyway: a resumé is used for jobs in practical settings like planning firms, while a CV is used for academic positions. And we stuck to one rule: highlight your strengths in two pages or less. This is easy if you have very little job experience…it’s going to be a pretty brief CV even if you include everything you’ve ever done. If you have a little more experience, it takes some clever skill and editing to summarize what you did at each job. Good editing is the key to a strong resumé: I have seen many examples of too much information squeezed onto the page. Clever use of white space makes for an impressive resumé. And for God’s sake, pay attention to your fonts! Use two at the most, and be consistent about how they are used.

Cover letters are difficult. There are some great examples online these days, but basically you want to introduce yourself, talk about the skills and experience that relate to the job, and summarize the reasons you would be perfect for the job. Pretty simple. A lot of people are not used to “selling themselves”, but it’s part of the process: you’re trying to convince the employer to interview you, and eventually hire you. Read the letter over and ask yourself: would you hire yourself? Why would you choose yourself over the other applicants out there? Keep the letter to build on the next time. And there will be a next time.

The decision of who to use as a reference was, and still is, rather simple: if you’re still at school or recently graduated, it’s going to be a professor. Your favourite, the one you wrote a fantastic paper for, or the one you worked for as a research assistant are obvious choices. If you’ve got any job experience at all, it’s your employer. Check with them first. That’s it.

There’s more than enough information out there on writing resumés and cover letters. So much, in fact, that not knowing how to achieve these basic job search tasks makes you look lazy. Why would an employer choose to hire someone who couldn’t do a little basic research?

Metropolis 2010

Je viens de retourner de Montréal, où j’avais l’opportunité de practiquer mon français. A brief two and a half days of bilingual workshops and roundtables on immigration issues, mostly in the Canadian context, was enlightening and quite enjoyable. The best part: it was a relatively small conference, with 1200 participants and only four concurrent sessions. This meant it was well organized, there were very few changes to the programme itself, and it was very easy to find your way around the two floors dedicated to our conference: qualities usually missing at the American Association of Geographers annual congress, where I’ve presented a couple of times.

The small size of the conference meant that I was asked to be in a roundtable with some of the top researchers in the field: Bob Murdie who is retired from York University, Carlos Teixeira at UBC Okanagan, Sutama Ghosh at Ryerson, and Damaris Rose of INRS. I have cited all of these authors in my own work, and they proved to be just as thorough, but unassuming, as their writing would suggest. Also included were some housing agency representatives like my old friend Jim Zamprelli from Canada Mortgage and Housing Coporation, and two of us PhD students. The roundtable audience was a good size and included David Ley from UBC Geography and Sandeep Agrawal from Ryerson: David of course is legendary in geography (last year he was named a Distinguished Scholar by the American Association of Geographers); Sandeep is the Director of Ryerson’s Master of Planning program.

David Firang, who is currently doing his PhD in Social Work at U of T, presented his research on the housing choices of Ghanaian immigrants in the next session, where I also presented my preliminary findings. Carlos presented his latest research on immigrants in the Central Okanagan Valley, cementing the idea that immigrants have very few choices due to housing policy that does not support market rental or affordable housing construction. Tom Carter from the University of Winnipeg discussed some of the issues immigrants have in the smaller Manitoba centers, where there is still fairly significant housing market discrimination. Tom also noted, after my presentation, that immigrants to the smaller centers often complain about the lack of public transit, even if they live in towns of 500 residents. Damaris, who was the discussant in our session, gave us all some important insights and comments, and very kindly welcomed David and I into the research arena.

Now, usually I find the plenary sessions less than exciting. But in this case the speakers included Krishna Pendakur, the hilarious and brilliant economics professor from Simon Fraser University, Valerie Preston from York University, Immigration Minister Jason Kenney, and UBC’s own Dan Hiebert. Krishna had the audience laughing right from his introduction, even though his research was depressing: Canadian-born visible minorities are just not doing as well as Canadian-born whites, at least in terms of income. His comments about entrenched racism in the workplace (“The good thing is that these people that make the decisions, they’re old, they’re racist, and they’re going to die eventually.”) and the differences in outcomes across cities (“Do you see these lines? Do you get what I’m sayin’? I’m sayin’ I’m glad I live in Vancouver!”) really brought home the importance of how the information is delivered. The participants at our table looked at Krishna with the rapt eyes of devotees: one said, “I love this guy!” and another, “He actually makes stats interesting!” Valerie, who spoke right after Krishna, started by saying, “How do I follow that?” Jason Kenney’s speech wasn’t interesting in the least, but the fact that his presence was delayed by two separate protesters, who disagree with “Canada’s white supremacist immigration policies” definitely livened up the audience. I suppose it is a testament to political will that he still appeared and did his prepared speech, which showed the mark of the current adminstration’s insensitivity towards Canada’s temporary foreign workers, and seemed to reinforce the idea that while the country needs immigrants, it does very little to help newcomers find work, find housing, and settle into their lives in Canada.

Outside of the sessions, there were so many interesting people to talk to: I met Masters and PhD students, housing providers, non-profit agency professionals, and government officials at the federal, regional, and municipal levels. One night I was pleased to sit with Alan Simmons, a professor of sociology at York University, and his wife Jean, who teaches in family counselling at Guelph University; the rest of our table included people in social work, social justice and anthropology. This was a real interdisciplinary mix, and many of the people I spoke to said this was their first time at Metropolis.

Je suis heureuse de vous dire que le prochaine congrès sera à Vancouver! (Je vais améliorer mon français avant que ça, je vous le promets.) À la prochaine tout le monde!

Does Canada have an Ivy League?

There is a lot of debate out there about whether or not there are schools in Canada equivalent to the American Ivy League (Brown, Columbia, Cornell, Dartmouth, Harvard, Princeton, University of Pennsylvania, and Yale). I’m not sure why this is so important for people to know, but I do know that as a potential applicant for teaching positions at US universities, an Ivy-League education is considered the best. Even in Canada, loyalty to the old prestigious universities is not in the least diminished by Maclean’s annual rankings.

As a Canadian, I don’t know anyone who did an undergraduate degree at an Ivy League school, so my first introduction to the concept was when my classmates in landscape architecture began applying for masters programs over a decade ago. Inevitably, they chose to apply to American Ivy League schools like Harvard and Cornell. Interestingly, their main reason was that “all the famous landscape architects went there.” (not surprising: Harvard was the first landscape architecture program in North America and the only one for many years). Having visited the Graduate School of Design and seen their students’ work around this time, we were surprised to find that our work was quite comparable to theirs; in some cases, better. One friend, who applied to and finished a Harvard Masters in Planning, said that the main advantage of the school was the alumni network, which would ensure he could find jobs anywhere. The Harvard degree also exposed him to very prominent experts and guest lecturers. Even more interesting, he is now living and working with many of our former classmates who did not invest in Ivy League educations. The same applies to a couple of our classmates who attended Cornell for the Masters in Architecture, and now work at architecture firms with others with “less prestigious” degrees.

The thing is, Canadians know about the American Ivy League, but we don’t really get it. I mean, we get that they’re prestigious and expensive and old. But we’re hampered by the fact that universities in Canada are virtually all public institutions, and there are few expensive, elite blue-blood institutions in the country aside from elementary and secondary schools like Branksome Hall and Ashbury College. According to the Canadian Information Centre for International Credentials, there are 94 universities in Canada (83 with degree-granting status) belonging to the Association of Universities and Colleges in Canada. There are 27 private colleges, the vast majority being theological schools: when you take these out, there are only 6 left. Tuition costs at Canadian schools are much cheaper than American schools, although generally the older, larger schools cost a bit more and since tuition deregulation in the 1990s the professional programs can charge more than the standard tuition. They can also offer more funding, so it evens out: even Statistics Canada found that there has been little decrease in the proportion of lower-income students attending university now than before tuitions began their rapid ascent in the 1990s. So the Ivy League is a tradition we simply do not have here. Ditto those other prestigious American schools that are supposed to impress us. American students enrolled at Canadian schools often find their introductory conversations go a bit like this:

Canadian: So you’re from Pennsylvania?

American: Yes. I went to XXX School. (pause for reaction)

Canadian: Oh yeah? (blank stare)

American: (confused) It’s a really good school.

Canadian: Ohhhh. (realizing the faux pas in not knowing the names and reputations of all 45670 American schools) Well that’s great. (unimpressed)

That’s right, I said it: we don’t know your schools the way you don’t know our prime ministers. Or our provinces. Or our capital.

That said, the four universities that many consider to be the “Canadian Ivys” are the University of Toronto, McGill University, Queens University, and the University of British Columbia. The only logic to this seems to be that they are old and therefore have ivy-covered buildings! These schools, because of their age, have extensive and well-known alumni who teach, do research, win Nobel Prizes and Fields Medals, and otherwise propagate the mythology of their being better schools than the rest. There is also something called the Group of Thirteen, which includes the above-mentioned schools plus the University of Alberta, University of Calgary, Dalhousie University, Université Laval, MacMaster University, Université Montréal, University of Ottawa, University of Waterloo, and University of Western Ontario. These schools meet informally twice a year to discuss joint research initiatives and between them hold 66% of Canada Research Chairs, which is proportional to the amount of research funding they bring in from SSHRC, NSERC, and CIHR. And if I’m going to be honest, these schools probably get more famous guest lecturers.

But the Maclean’s rankings show a very different story: each school has very different strengths. The magazine divides Canadian universities into three categories: primarily undergraduate, comprehensive undergraduate, and medical doctoral universities. The schools are evaluated on a range of characteristics, including spending on student services and scholarships and bursaries, funding for libraries, faculty success in obtaining national research grants, and their reputation for being innovative. The top-ranked primarily undergraduate schools are Mount Allison and University of Northern British Columbia. The top-ranked comprehensive undergraduate schools are Simon Fraser and University of Victoria. And the top-ranked medical doctoral schools are McGill, Queens and Toronto. Some schools have highly-ranked business or teaching programs, others are strong in medicine or law. Indeed, some of these professional programs are known in their individual fields as “the best.” Some have a small student-to-teacher ratio, others have better resources or funding. And then there are the student favourites, typically small schools with a friendly atmosphere in a beautiful location, like Mount Allison.

I attended two of the supposed “Canadian Ivys”: University of Toronto and University of British Columbia. I know only a handful of people at either of these universities who attended a private school before entering these seemingly august institutions (ie., these aren’t the elites of society). I don’t believe that these schools have better students, better teaching, or better facilities than other schools in the country: in some cases, Maclean’s shows they fail in all three areas. Graduates of these schools don’t seem to conduct themselves any differently, have access to better alumni networks, or get better jobs than graduates of other schools. While working as a landscape architect in England, for example, I ran into graduates from the universities of Guelph and Waterloo who were working for British municipalities; in Ottawa I met many government employees who were graduates of Université Laval, Carleton University, and the University of New Brunswick. I have yet to meet a Canadian who was impressed by the schools I attended, nor have I encountered any innate sense of superiority among graduates of these schools. Yet when I attend conferences, I frequently find myself having this conversation:

American: Oh, you’re at UBC?

Me: Yes.

American: Oh, that’s a really good school. (impressed)

Me: Is it? (seemingly amused, but actually quite curious)

American: (confused) Well, yes.

Me: Why would you say that?

American: (stumped) I…hmm. (because I’ve heard of it)

The relatively level playing field among Canadian universities is probably one reason why Canada has the largest proportion of university graduates among G7 countries and the highest percentage of university graduates in the workforce. Immigrants in Canada have particularly high levels of university attendance: 37% compared to 22% of the Canadian-born population. Among recent immigrants (those who entered the country less than two years ago) 48% of females and 56% of males had a university degree according to the 2006 Census. Women have outpaced men in university attendance since the late 1970s, and more lower-income people are attending university in Canada than ever before. These types of changes have led to much more diversity in Canadian universities. And there is considerable evidence that nurture, as opposed to nature, is the key to success in education: Malcolm Gladwell vividly illustrates this in Outliers.

With only a handful (15) universities in Maclean’s medical doctoral category, Canadians often seek jobs in other countries; this is particularly true in academia. But we know that we will be judged by the school we went to, because that seems to be a common trend in the American university hiring process. A glance at the faculty directories of an Ivy League school reveals that virtually all of their faculty did their doctorate or post-doctorate work at an Ivy League school. Lou Marinoff, in a recent article in Inside Higher Ed outlined how his philosophy department, in City College at the City University of New York, narrowed down their search for a new faculty member from 627 applicants to 27 long-listed and 6 short-listed ones. A major criteria in the first step was holding a degree from “a good university.” As Marinoff writes, “Members of our department earned their Ph.D.s at Columbia, Harvard, Oxford, and University of London. Additionally, City College is known as the “Harvard of the Proletariat,” with distinguished alumni that include nine Nobel Laureates, more than any other public institution in America. Our faculty members are expected to live up to this legacy.” Of course publications, research, teaching, administrative service were up there too.

I would love to say that this kind of academic snobbery does not exist in Canada, but it is pretty standard here to imitate Americans. Most of my friends in design professions hold Ivy League degrees in higher regard, and since my era at U of T’s School of Architecture and Landscape Architecture, the school has been completely rebranded with graduates of Yale, Princeton and Harvard. Many Canadian faculty members are American, or educated in the US, and bring these ideas with them. I can definitely say that the “reputation” of the school seems to play a role in the admissions process at SCARP. The ridiculous thing about this is that our school (which is a graduate program only) accepts applications from undergraduates in any discipline. And according to Maclean’s, as well as my own experience, programs vary considerably from school to school. So using school “reputations” makes no sense: you would have to be a master of every undergraduate program in the country to know what a “good school” was for that particular program. It’s one thing for a medical school to compare B.Sc students from everywhere, or engineering programs to compare their B.Eng applicants; it’s quite another for a multidisciplinary program which draws its students from programs as diverse as Forestry, French, Geography, Architecture, and Canadian Studies. It’s part of the reason why our school uses such a complex application process, evaluating transcripts, a research statement, reference letters, and work experience equally.

Interestingly, Marinoff’s philosophy department invited 6 candidates to their school for interviews. Here is his summary of their performance: “All the finalists were impeccably well versed in their subjects matter, but not all succeeded in establishing rapport with the students. One lectured remotely, as if from afar; another failed to engage them in dialogue; a third took insufficient account of whether the class was grasping the material. Some lectured clearly and evocatively, encouraged and fielded questions on the fly, bridged gaps in students’ understanding by providing additional context where necessary, and covered the material in the allotted time. The best finalists attracted a throng of students after the lecture, having whetted appetites for further learning. The top two bundled humor with their lectures or slides, which palpably enhanced the ambiance and helped establish rapport. “Edutainment” is an American neologism, after all.”

When it comes right down to it, these candidates (CCNY hired the top two) succeeded not because of their Ivy League pedigrees, but because of their ability to engage students and cope with the classroom setting most effectively. Now, whether they gained these credentials as a result of their “superior” educations is a matter for debate: they were likely supported and mentored more than students at other schools, because their high tuition costs resulted in more resources (again, Outliers is relevant). I suspect these outstanding candidates worked hard at developing their skills and lecturing style, and had a real passion for teaching. Preferential selection of candidates based on their school’s reputations was really just a useful filter in this case, a way of decreasing the number of applicants to consider carefully, albeit one that probably eliminated many worthy candidates from lower income and minority backgrounds who couldn’t afford Ivy League educations.

All this to say that I don’t believe there is a Canadian Ivy League, nor do I think we need one. It’s too bad that universities, professors, and students can’t get over these ideas of being “the best”, or producing the “best and the brightest” students. This relentless competition is even seen in what Richard Moll, in his 1985 book, called the “public Ivys”, eight American schools that were “successfully competing with the Ivy League schools in academic rigor… attracting superstar faculty and in competing for the best and brightest students of all races.” It’s even worse that the myth of the Canadian Ivy League is being relentlessly perpetuated by recruiters who travel all over the world with glossy brochures featuring the old ivy-clad buildings (international student tuitions are higher than those for Canadian citizens, so the schools encourage it). But the Canadian reality is a bit different, and there really is no reason a University of Alberta grad and a McGill grad should not be considered equally.

Funding inequities make a big difference in PhD studies

In a previous post, I joked about the obvious discrepancies in funding between humanities/social sciences and natural sciences…and I say this with all due respect for the two-level trailer in which SCARP has been housed for many years. Interestingly, Inside Higher Education recently reported that funding was the most important factor in PhD completion for US PhD recipients. They also found major differences between humanities/social science students and math/science/engineering students: while 76% of science students were satisfied with their funding, only 60% of humanities students were. And with good reason: social sciences are less likely than others to receive offers covering six or more years, even though many humanities PhDs take longer than six years to complete. Humanities doctoral students were more likely than those in other fields to receive offers covering only two or three years.

I would say that in the current neoliberal political climate, these inequities are typical. Science, math, and engineering are somehow considered more valid subjects of study than english, sociology, and architecture. And with many universities increasingly looking to the private sector for capital and program funding, many software, pharmaceutical, and in BC forestry companies are filling the gaps. I could debate the morals of this to no end, but this won’t solve the basic issue, which is that fields of study which produce products, technologies, or services that are marketable or patentable are favoured in the current climate. This is a real shame, because we need writers, sociologists and architects just as much as we need lab technicians, mathematical modellers and engineers. To quote the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council,

Research in the social sciences and humanities advances knowledge and builds understanding about individuals, groups and societies—what we think, how we live and how we interact with each other and the world around us. Knowledge and understanding inform discussion on critical social, cultural, economic, technological, environmental and wellness issues and provide communities, businesses and governments the foundation for a vibrant and healthy democracy. Through research and training programs, SSHRC fosters the development of talented and creative people who become leaders across the private and public sectors and who are critical to Canada’s success in the globalized 21st century.

The distinction between arts and sciences is only semantics anyway, particularly in newer fields that cannot be easily categorized. I’ll use landscape architecture an example, which was not a university degree program until the postwar era. My undergraduate degree in Landscape Architecture, for which I received a BLArch, neither a BA or a BSc. This is because at the University of Toronto, the faculty is independent and does not fall under either arts or sciences; actually this is a moot point at U of T, where there is a combined Faculty of Arts & Sciences. If I had gone to another school, I would have received a BSCLA, particularly if the landscape architecture program was in the agriculture or applied science faculties; or a BA, if the program fell under geography. So at some schools landscape architecture is a science, at some it falls under social sciences, and in others it is in neither category. Now that landscape architecture is mainly a graduate degree program, students with a range of bachelors’ degrees apply and are accepted into these programs. None of this has anything to do with the courses, which span subjects like dendrology, site engineering, design studios, and planting design and are approved by a national accreditation board.

That’s too unique, you say? Most fields can be much more easily categorized? Okay, let’s take geography. If you specialize in physical geography, you might be studying rock formations, specific types of algae, or air pollution in a range of cities. On the other hand, human geography would lead to studies of women and technology, the impact of immigration policies, or patterns of gentrification in cities. At UBC and U of T, the first option would lead to a BSc and the second to a BA, with each having very different courses. But things start to blur a little in the Masters programs where both BA and BSc students are admitted to one program, and they graduate with either an MA or an MSc depending on what their undergraduate degree was. SCARP takes this same approach: if your undergraduate was in Forestry, you will graduate from SCARP with an MSc; an undergraduate in French will earn you an MA. Notice that this has nothing to do with the courses you take: two separate students could in fact take the exact same courses during the Masters program, one ending up with an MA and the other an MSc.

There are many fields that don’t easily fall into neat arts or science categories, not to mention the journalism student specializing in health and science or the psychologist who studies cognitive behavioural therapy. But because of the funding inequities, if you fall into one of these academic grey areas, you’ll be lumped in with the humanities…and that means less money for your education. Which means you’ll probably have to work during school, which will lengthen the time you take to complete. This is definitely an issue at SCARP, where the scarcity of funding and lack of teaching assistant positions compels many of us to work part-time.

This type of funding inequity is self-perpetuating: fewer people can afford to back to school to study humanities and social sciences, so there are fewer graduates, so the pool of funding decreases, so studying humanities and social sciences seems less popular and less valid. A bunch of us at SCARP signed the petition to prevent SSHRC from prioritizing business-related studies, to no avail. But there has been some media coverage about the inequities so hopefully some day they will even out. I would advise potential grad students in the social sciences and humanities to work for a few years and save up some money before starting grad school. That was my M.O., and it’s worked out perfectly.

The “haves” and “have-nots” at Canadian universities

Aquatic Ecosystems Research Lab (top left), Chemical Engineering, Hugh Dempster Pavilion, Institute for Computing Information and Cognitive Sciences/Computer Science, Life Sciences Center, new Annex to the Sauder School of Business, Institute for Asian Studies, Forestry Sciences Centre

If you’re a Canadian university student, there’s an easy way to tell where your faculty stands in the university’s hierarchy. Just look around you. Does your building feature the latest in LEED technology, up-to-the-minute computer facilities, and lecture theaters equipped with comfortable chairs and ceiling-mounted digital projectors? You’re in the money…and by that I mean you’re a business or science student. On the other hand, if your faculty is located in what we used to call “portables” in grade school, and lacks all but basic lighting and plumbing, you’re probably in the social sciences.

This useful guide demonstrates these principles at UBC. One of the oldest, and most antiquated, universities in Canada, UBC has nothing but sharp distinctions between the “haves” and “have nots”. First, the rich folks. Computer science are a good example, with three (count’em, three) major buildings, the newest of which only contains classrooms (the Hugh Dempster Pavilion). Or the Forestry faculty, whose massive timber-lined fortress was built on donations from Weyerhouser and MacMillan Bloedel. If you’re studying science or business, your faculty is associated with, and sponsored by, mega corporations, and these important ties ensure you have the best facilities on campus. You also get a pile of grants, all the teaching assistantships you want, and often free lab or computer equipment. Not only that, your faculty is highly regarded by the university, politicians, and the public in general.

Your faculty could be one that used to be considered important. You know, like chemistry (not chemical engineering…chemistry). Or geography. Or sociology. Subjects that commanded a lot of prestige back in the day when universities were about learning first and patenting inventions second. Your building was either built 100 years ago or 40 years ago, the two major university-building eras in Canadian history. So either you’re in a beautiful stone building that has just been brought up to safety codes, or you’re in a 1960s modernist bunker.

Chemistry (South Wing), Chemistry (North Wing), Education, Biological Sciences, Earth and Ocean Sciences, Music, and Geography

If your faculty is considered marginally important to society (ie, your research does not involve mathematical predictions, computer models, or patentable organisms or technology) then the university and the public have ensured that your faculty is in marginal condition. There’s no need to lock your doors because the computer equipment is at least a decade or two old. It would be difficult to tell if vandals had set upon your building the night before. And suffice it to say, your classrooms are barely sufficient and your graduate students are crowded into tiny offices with 1970s chairs.

Binning Studios (Visual Arts), Landscape Architecture Studios, Visual Arts, Community and Regional Planning, Women's and Gender Studies

Neo-liberal principles are certainly alive and well at UBC. At this rate it won’t be long until we’ve eroded even English and History as valid subjects of study. Not to mention the difficulty of getting research funding in the social sciences: the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council was recently forced to cut its funding to cover only business-related degrees. What about NSERC, the natural sciences equivalent? No worries, the government and multi-million dollar industries still support you.

Think your university is more balanced in its capital spending? If it’s publicly funded, like most Canadian universities, it’s pretty likely they’ve embraced public-private partnerships, which means only the rich shall survive.

Farewell Meidad Kissinger

Dr. Meidad Kissinger, who graduated from SCARP in 2008, is to begin teaching at Ben-Gurion University in Israel this September. Meidad specializes in comparative ecological footprint analysis, where he traces the impacts of globalizing trade on specific products such as wood, bananas, coffee, and beef. He argues, along with Dr. Bill Rees and Dr. Mathis Wackernagel, that the footprint of products extends far beyond the boundaries of a single nation, which has a major impact on sustainability.

Meidad has been a fixture at our school for six years, and shows no end of collaboration and co-publication with others in the field of ecological planning and sustainability. Most recently, he taught Ecological Economics and Post-Sustainability at SCARP during his post-doctorate year. He’s looking forward to a return to Israel with his family and teaching full-time at Ben-Gurion. Best of luck, Meidad!

Dr. Meidad Kissinger (second from left) with SCARP PhD students

Dr. Meidad Kissinger (second from right) with SCARP PhD students

The relevance of research

In an article in Saturday’s Globe and Mail, Jeffrey Simpson reports on a study on the factors that influence university attendance. University of Ottawa professor Ross Finnie and his co-author Richard Mueller, using Statistics Canada data, found that family income is less of a predictor of university attendance than the parents’ education levels, the number of books in the house, internet access, family dinner conversations, the presence of both parents in the household, and cultural background. Simpson points out that this causes a problem for governments who would like to increase university attendance: they have little control over what he calls “cultural” factors.

This is an interesting conundrum. As planning graduate students, we are often encouraged to think about the policy implications of our research. It must be practical in some way. While the first impulse is to ask how our research will impact policy development, a deeper examination of knowledge into action (as our friend John Friedmann would say) is more appropriate.

In an earlier post, I reported on our PhD panel at SCARP’s recent symposium on how research moves from academia into practice. The different methods we discussed were:

Giving policy makers empirical evidence upon which to base policy and programs
Publishing in a variety of non-academic venues including professional and trade conference presentations
Bringing different actors into dialogue through participatory planning exercises
Learning from planning practices in other countries
Using case studies as examples of planning practice in the teaching process
Re-examining traditional planning models to lead to paradigm shift

Using this broader framework to redefine the practical nature of our research, we can see the value of Finnie and Mueller’s work. While their study’s findings doesn’t give policy makers empirical evidence, they serve as a useful reminder that family income alone does not determine university attendance. In an era of rapidly rising tuition and concerns over equitable university access for all potential students, this is incredibly valuable information. We are in the habit of comparing ourselves to the US, where income can and does play a major role even at the elementary school level. American parents often choose their housing based on the locations of the best school districts.

Simpson points out that immigrants, especially from Asia, are much more likely to attend university than other ethnic groups; as a cultural factor, this is seen as impossible to adapt to policy. As part of this large ethnic category (South Asian) I can confirm that Asian parents put more of a priority on university attendance. Education is highly valued, even above marriage, for themselves and their children; they will even encourage married children to live away from their spouse to complete a degree, something that would never be encouraged in other ethnic groups. Many of these parents come from countries where they have seen the value of a Bachelor’s or Masters degree, and want their children to do as well as, or better than, they did in their own careers. While we can’t replace everyone’s parents with academically-oriented Asians, perhaps it’s time to gain some insight from Asian parents on how their children become such high achievers. If they help their children with homework more than other ethnic groups, perhaps schools could encourage study groups led by parents or encourage more dialogue between parents of different ethnic groups. If they use specific techniques to help encourage their kids or reward them for work done, perhaps other parents could learn these techniques and apply them. We are encouraged to learn planning practices from other countries; why not learn educational techniques?

Owning a dictionary, having many books in the home, internet access, and family dinnertime conversation were all found to predict university attendance. While the government certainly can’t mandate these practices (as Simpson jokes) schools could encourage parents to buy second-hand books, have fund-raiser book sales, or create web lounges for students to use after school with their parents. Community groups could have monthly dinner clubs for school-aged children and their parents. Instead of a play date for their kids, parents could host a kids book club.

The presence of two parents in the home, an increasingly rare occurrence these days, was also found to encourage university attendance. The two-parent household is implicated in all sorts of positive benefits, yet we do not know what specifically leads to all these benefits. If it is the fact that single parents often work longer hours and have less time to spend helping their children with homework, we can again see some program opportunities for children living in single-parent households: perhaps an after-school study group at a community center or help using the internet for class assignments.

In short, despite Simpson’s joke that governments could give tax incentives for dinner conversation or buying a dictionary (I’m sure Stephen Harper would disapprove), there are many ways in which this research could lead to paradigm shift in our perceptions of university preparation and equitable access to universities. Now that family income has been revealed as a less important factor than what Simpson calls “cultural” factors, perhaps it will free researchers to delve further into the factors that have the most impact on university attendance.

This example serves as a reminder that our research as planners need not have immediate policy relevance. It can move into planning practice in any number of ways, and can help change the way people think about important social issues. Finally, it illustrates our point that publishing in non-academic venues such as the Globe and Mail can move research into the public imagination.

The Holy Trinity: policy, practice, and research

Yesterday the School of Community and Regional Planning hosted a symposium called SustainaWHAT? SustainaHOW? The aim of the two-day event was to bring together planning policy makers with practitioners and academics to discuss how to move from talking about sustainability issues to implementation.

As I mentioned in a previous post, several PhD students comprised a panel on how research moves from academia into practice. Ugo Lachapelle discussed how research in active transportation has given policy makers empirical evidence of the benefits of walking and cycling, which has led to policy and programs encouraging alternative modes could be implemented. James White spoke about the importance of practitioners and academic researchers attending each others’ conferences and about publishing in a variety of non-academic venues. Aftab Erfan discussed participatory planning exercises as a way to bring different actors into dialogue. Leslie Shieh discussed the value of learning from planning practices in other countries. Janice Barry proposed that using case studies as examples of planning practice in the teaching process provides a vital link between practice and academia. I spoke of the way housing and transportation models have been instrumental in shaping policy, and how a re-examination of these models can lead to paradigm shift. The example I used was how research into immigrants’ housing careers led to the finding that lack of foreign credential recognition was resulting in lower labour market participation, lower incomes and therefore lower homeownership rates among immigrants. These findings, and others indicating poor outcomes for immigrants, led to policies like the Canada-Ontario-Toronto Memorandum of Understanding on Immigration to develop short bridging courses at community colleges to help new immigrants get Canadian experience and find work, develop more immigrant services, and develop municipal websites to help immigrants find housing, public transit and employment information.

As another example, the session on planning for multicultural cities included panelists Dr. Dan Hiebert (UBC Geography), Paula Carr (Collingwood Neighbourhood House) and Bill Walters (Immigrant Integration Branch, BC Ministry of Advanced Education and Labour Market Development). Their examples went from theoretical (Hiebert researches immigration policy and integration) to practical (Carr discussed the original vision for the creation of a neighbourhood community centre and historic groundbreaking that included a wide range of ethnic communities, ages, and social classes). Interestingly, this was exactly the type of dialogue that Aftab had discussed in our PhD panel, and something that is rarely seen at conferences. It provoked a rather heated discussion between the three panelists, who have different ideas of what could and should be done by the state to facilitate immigrant integration. Hiebert argues that we need to drop the old questions of whether or not immigrants are integrating, whether or not we have ethnic enclaves, and how do we (non-immigrants) manage this. Rather we need to focus on whether more minorities are living in, and are these neighbourhoods ghettos? According to Hiebert’s research, more people are living in ethnic enclaves in Toronto and Vancouver, but the low-income immigrants are not concentrated in these areas. He found that the number of ethnic groups in minority enclaves was almost the same as in other neighbourhoods. He believes that we need a dichotomy between segregation and dispersal, cultural retention and integration. We need to see integration as more complex and understand layers of diversity. And we need to understand that there’s no “we” who should control immigrant integration. Doubtless Carr agreed; her own experience at the neighbourhood house showed the positive effects of community building in a very multicultural neighbourhood. Walter’s review of the Welcoming and Inclusive Workplaces Program showed a counter example of very top-town efforts to combat racism in our communities.

All told, the symposium was a rare example of the coming together of planning’s Holy Trinity. Here’s to more of the same.

All is one; all is planning

One of the main topics of conversation in our PhD programme is the ever-expanding definition of planning. For us, planning can include social and community development, ecological planning and natural resource management, transportation planning, land use planning, urban design and urban development. A student will never get past their initial committee meeting, let alone their comprehensive exam, prospectus, or dissertation defense, without answering the dreaded, “How is your research planning research?” Since our school has a Masters and a PhD programme, students at the Masters thesis defense are likely to answer this question as well.

The purpose of this question has eluded me for some time now. At our school we are taught that planning is so broad and all-encompassing that it can include…well, virtually anything. We know, from talking with other students at various schools across North America, that many schools concentrate on land use planning, policy development, research methods and tools used by planners in the field. This narrower planning focus produces planning professionals who are quite adept at their jobs in municipal government and consultancy. But does it produce researchers? Academics? Writers? This is less certain.

And how does the student answer the question of planning relevancy? Is it enough to answer that planners are concerned with non-motorized transportation, the location of affordable housing, participatory planning? In my case, I will be conducting research on the housing and transportation choices of immigrants in Toronto. I have found numerous examples in Toronto’s municipal and regional plans that show a new concern for housing and transit infrastructure provision. Toronto’s Official Plan documents show housing affordability and housing tenure are major concerns, as rental housing is not growing at a rate high enough to meet demand. Municipalities in the Toronto region, like Mississauga and Brampton, acknowledge their high rates of immigration and set out areas for future housing development and better links to adjacent transportation systems. Is my research going to “sit on a shelf somewhere” while practicing planners are concerned with more practical matters? Since local planners are writing policy about accommodating population growth through residential infill along transportation corridors, mine is indeed a planning question and my research could prove useful to those in this policy area. But it could also be useful in the wider debates around affordable housing provision, the shrinking middle class, income disparities, and immigrant integration. That’s my answer and I’m sticking to it!

We will be having a symposium next week at our school (SustainaWHAT? SustainaHOW?), and a few of us will be discussing the issue of moving from theory into practice. Our PhD panel will discuss the various ways that research in our areas has moved from academia to planning practice: through the intermediary of teaching, through action research, through the provision of hard data to be used in policy creation, by challenging existing models and bringing new ideas into the public discourse, by publishing our work in different venues and presenting to various professional organizations. We argue that it is our contribution to planning practice that distinguishes our work from related fields such as geography or sociology; we consider this more essential than any contribution to knowledge.

I would argue that a breadth of planning knowledge is, and will continue to be, essential in our complex and ever-changing world. We need planners who can work with communities to develop solutions to local problems, those who can work on land use and regulatory change, those who can plan new transportation corridors and bike paths, and those who can develop guidelines for better neighbourhoods. We need people working on both practical tools and on theory development. Planning history tells us that there is no one-size-fits-all approach.

Ren Thomas

M.A., Ph.D. Candidate (Planning, UBC)