The case for the merger of McGill and Concordia
THE GAZETTE, MONTREAL,
WEDNESDAY, MAY 31, 2000John A. MacKnnon In an act of goodwill and vision McGill and Concordia universities should merge. The merger would form a university of 100,000 students, with operations extending from the centre of the city to Ste Anne de Bellevue and have campuses strategically at the Guy Concordia metro station and in Montreal West. The McGill University Health Centre then could be located on the existing McGill campus to capture present and future synergies of a merged McGill-Concordia operation. The McGill campus consists of a large green space surrounded by a number of old, dysfunctional buildings which should be replaced by modern buildings designed for the new economy. I suggest that McGill and Concordia co-operate in building a new science and engineering complex near the Guy Concordia metro on the corner of Guy and De Maisonneuve. State-of-the- art teaching laboratories in physics, engineering, computer science and medical imaging could be located in this building which, because of the proximity to the metro, would be easily accessible. Such a joint effort of McGill and Concordia would capture the imagination of the Montreal business, and scientific communities, enabling tens of millions of dollars to be raised. The university and health systems are under severe economic pressure due to government cutbacks and structural changes in the economy. It is becoming more difficult to recruit professors, health-care workers and researchers who are experts in the leading-edge technologies. These economic forces will force McGill and Concordia to develop new strategies if they are to survive in the new millennium. At my web site (www.sonetis.com/~htran/physics.html) I have posted an article called A UNIVERSITY FOR THE NEW MILLENNIUM in which I outline structural changes to increase the efficiency of the university system. The problem now is to control and even reduce costs. A university must know how much it costs to do research and how much it costs to do teaching. Now the two activities are hopelessly intertwined so that it is impossible to get a good fix on the costs to do each. A university professor should not be paid $100,000 to teach one course, and student tuition should not be used to subsidize research. McGill and Concordia would be forced to seek out relationships with other successful people, institutions, and universities as a way of improving programs with a minimum of additional expense. Here are some of suggestions I have for a merged university: * Teaching and research should be managed by separate bureaucracies. * Education divisions should be set up in each department and these would be connected to the faculty of education. The education divisions would be plugged into CEGEPS and high schools to improve curriculums and serve as information centres. The learning and development centre should be folded into the education division. * The university co-op system should be strengthened in all faculties to provide a career path for as many programs as possible. * All research should be placed in research centres. A new type of research-professor position should be created in which an office, a telephone and basic stipend would be provided. The professor would be free to solicit outside contracts from which his salary could be enhanced. * The hard sciences such as physics, chemistry, biology and so on in the faculty of arts and science should be moved to the faculty of engineering where synergies could develop. * Foreign and out-of-province students could attend a private McGill and Concordia operation. The operation is private in the sense that the foreign and out-of-province student names are not sent to the provincial government for tuition subsidies and the entire student tuition is retained within the McGill and Concordia operation. * Franchise arrangements should be developed with firms such as Microsoft and Learning Tree International to provide instruction in leading technologies. * McGill and Concordia should seek out relationships with leading-edge technology companies. McGill and Concordia need professors and these companies need bright, young employees. It is too expensive to recreate complete engineering environments at universities, and it is too expensive to create teaching facilities at a company. The synergy of a company and a university can be exploited to the advantage of both. * A computer culture should be developed in the new, combined faculty of science and engineering. This would help students keep abreast of the latest developments. ** John MacKinnon received a PhD in physics from McGill in 1968. He spent 30 years at Concordia University teaching and doing research in the physics department.