As many students have already experienced this year, OSAP is no longer primarily a paper process and there will be no more lineups to receive financial aid.

Glen Murray, Minister of Training, Colleges and Universities, stopped in Hamilton this morning to give a statement about the streamlining of OSAP.

OSAP Express is the new application process, and it affects more than 300,000 applicants and recipients in Ontario. Approximately 15,000 post-secondary students in Hamilton are expected to benefit.

The program requires students to sign a loan agreement once in their post-secondary career rather than each academic year. Its aim is to speed up confirmation of enrolment and direct deposit processes, and to eliminate lineups at the financial aid office.

“This came as a result of student associations advocating for change in the system, and we've delivered,” said Murray.

He said the new program would make receiving student aid easier while saving hundreds of thousands of dollars for institutions that choose to implement it.

“Moving forward, there is going to be a qualitative way in which we spend,” said Murray.

Huzaifa Saeed, Vice President (Education) of the McMaster Students Union, said at the announcement that OSAP Express is a much-needed step toward a more accessible post secondary system.

“The cost of education is a big issue, but a large part of the issue has to do with reception [of financial assistance].”

Pointing to a 2009 federal survey on financial literacy, Saeed said many students are in the dark about financial options and have not taken full advantage of all available student assistance.

Murray’s announcement comes on the heels of the 30 per cent off tuition grant introduced last January by the provincial government.

The grant, promised by the Liberals in the 2011 provincial election, aims to make education more affordable by delivering assistance with less hassle.

The program offers refunds of $1,680 to students in college and university programs and $770 to students for those in college diploma and certificate programs.

"So often, students are eligible for something and they don't know. As a result they end up not accessing that resource," said Ted McMeekin, MPP for Ancaster-Dundas-Flamborough-Westdale.

"Streamlining the process will put it all together for students to get that information."

Since the tuition grant came out, 200,000 refunds have been received, which means approximately 100,000 refunds have yet to be claimed.

The grant is available to full-time students at a public college or university in Ontario whose parents have a gross income of $160,000 or less. Students must be residents of Ontario and must have graduated high school within four years before applying directly to a postsecondary program.

Kacper Niburski

Assistant News Editor

 

Take an intense focus on science, a small class size and a genius of new-age pedagogy, and what comes out is the brainchild program Integrated Science – often referred to as iSci.

In its third year of existence, the program recently held its first ever symposium Synthesis, a nine-day event intended to celebrate the culmination of the academic school year, as well as an attempt to host an open invitation to people across the University to experience iSci.

Among the many things planned was an open forum discussion with president of McMaster University, Patrick Deane, centralized on his letter Forward with Integrity, and how it applies to the iSci program.

The forum focused on three aspects: how to generalize the iSci experience to all disciplines, how to integrate iSci into the broader Hamilton community and how to ensure that a research-based model is maintained during undergrad.

The first, of course, is naturally contentious. As delineated in Deane’s letter, the current of education is to move away from the antiquated model, and slowly evolve into a hybrid of interdisciplinary and experiential learning. If implemented, class sizes would shrink, students would have a more conducive relationship with professors and the material taught would be proportionally more difficult.

While the last bit may make some students cringe, the hypothetical proposal has merit. No longer would the Humanities house lectures of four hundred or more students. Chemistry students wouldn’t have to squeeze into their classes uncomfortably like a bunch of anionic electrons.

Under this progressive model – which is still ages away from being implemented – students would not feel like yet another number.

Yet this raises the obvious question of feasibility, especially considering the funding model of McMaster, where much of the tuition pays for University services.

Adamant as always, Deane stressed that, “under the current model, yes of course it is impossible. Yet we act like the model was decreed. It was a model that has lasted 120 years and worked relatively well. But is it the model for the next 120 years? I firmly believe it is not.”

For this reason, Deane looked to the pioneering work of the iSci program for motivation. Students offered their opinions on the program as a whole, as well as their concerns for its future. Some lauded the skills gleaned in the program such as scientific literacy, while others were more hesitant to praise, noting that the program is still too juvenile to adequately analyze its successes.

Regardless, the forum – and the iSci program itself – is an attempt to make University relevant. “If we don’t change now, people will look at universities as museums,” said Deane.

To that end, the symposium itself is a palliative for educational paralysis. In its fullest form, it is a moment of massive change.

Farzeen Foda 

Senior News Editor

 

The theme of 2012 in the post-secondary sphere has been the transformation of education. Much of this stems from the fact that the traditional model of post-secondary education, it seems, too often produces textbook thinkers that can read, memorize and regurgitate, which is hardly suitable to real-world settings.

McMaster’s Forward with Integrity initiative, inspired by president Patrick Deane, has attempted to rectify this by installing of various task forces charged with the mission of revitalizing education at McMaster University.

Students are pivotal to the project, and currently hold positions on the various task forces. Forums held throughout the year have sought to consolidate student suggestions about improving education at McMaster. Nearing the end of the academic year, the task forces are still in the planning and brainstorming phase, but feedback from the student body thus far generally asks for more flexibility in education, noted Susan Denburg, chair of the Forward with Integrity initiative.

Some complaints have arisen, though. Exposure to other faculties and departments may bring a better sense of cohesion, and while experiential learning and out-of-the-classroom experiences are central to education, each student has their own time constraints which are already strained with current levels of instructional hours. Therefore, ways to “build into rather than build on top” of current course structures is necessary, explained Denburg.

Much of the efforts to enhance the quality of post-secondary education centres around what students expect out of their education. Many students attend university in order to secure employment upon graduation, and building on the undergraduate university experience through a hands-on approach that encourages cross-disciplinary thinking undoubtedly increases employability.

“I’m hoping to get a job after I finish school, and it’s frustrating to feel like even after four years of school, I don’t have any of the skills employers look for,” said Ankita Dubey, a fourth-year Psychology student.

This is common across universities. A study conducted by the Higher Education Quality Council of Ontario found that a mere 45 per cent of university students are prepared to graduate after their fourth year, and students surveyed cited that the only motivation to pursue a three-year degree would be to enter the workforce sooner.

That being said, the traditional model of education is in the process of transformation. The finer details, however, remain to be determined. Meanwhile, students are aware that drilling content is not always the most effective learning strategy. “Some content is always very interesting and useful, however, content overload results in forgetting almost immediately after the exam, and that’s just money down the drain,” said Mark Vennare a fourth-year Biology student.

On April 4, The Forward With Integrity team will be holding a forum to share their insight and pose questions to the McMaster community to better inform their next steps.

Kacper Niburski

Assistant News Editor

 

While McMaster has devoted copious funds to maintaining its education model, it has remained relatively unchanged for a hundred years. McMaster was founded in 1881 as Toronto Baptist College by William McMaster, the first president of the Canadian Bank of Commerce, who bequeathed a substantial amount of capital to finance the university. Limiting the first programs to specializations in arts and theology, the first degrees were founded in 1894. In the dream of McMaster, the University was endowed as “a Christian school of learning.”

For the most part, this remained the character of McMaster. The early 19th century saw an expanding Baptist culture, and McMaster became a Christian mecca in the heart of Toronto. With its notoriety increasing, classes doubled, in-class education became more centralized upon a lecturing style developed at Harvard, and McMaster outgrew its physical boundaries.

As McMaster blossomed as an institute of higher learning, it began to lose its faith in more ways than one.

That is to say, much of the early theology and Baptist dogma that characterized McMaster’s nascent beginning was subjected to the scrutiny of a changing world, one that focused largely on the growth and progress of science. While by no means an existential crisis of grand proportion, McMaster saw the construction of the first Science Building in 1906, which spearheaded both a newfound appreciation of the field of science as well as a list of degrees not previously offered in the academic year.

Yet despite the influx of novel studies, McMaster’s education model remained stagnant. As it does now, professors taught, students learned and the cycle of so-called higher education continued without end or sign of mitigating, even after McMaster relocated to Hamilton in 1930.

Much of this can be attributed to the Province’s mandate on higher education. Considering that under the British North American Act responsibilities for universities rest in the government of the province it is located in, McMaster was incorporated under the Legislative Assembly of Ontario. To that end, McMaster has always been subjected to the wishes and machinations of the Province.

This, of course, is not a bad thing. Funding for research primarily comes from the University. Yet as a result, McMaster has continued along the same education current even after 1957, when McMaster became a publicly funded nondenominational society.

Some efforts have been made, though. Flagship interdisciplinary programs like Arts and Science, Integrated Science and Health Sciences function contrary to the general university experience: there are small classes, close relationships with professors and a focus on independent learning.

With the much of the education renewal discussions looking at these pioneering programs, only time will tell whether or not education will move forward with integrity, as Deane wishes to, or instead just move forward, only to realize it has been walking backwards the whole time.

Rob Hardy

Silhouette Staff

 

Discussion about the institution that is a university becomes quite complex, and many opinions exist. As I researched and interviewed a large number of faculty and staff, it is clearly a contentious issue, especially since the concept has markedly altered a great deal. Nevertheless, what follows is my own take after a fair effort to look at the big picture, and an attempt to challenge some of my more dogmatic views.

First off, it is important to take a step back to examine how this institution came into being. The word ‘academia’ harkens back to Ancient Greece, where philosophers expounded on many interconnected topics dealing with the big questions of life that ultimately inform our moral choices on a daily level. Works by Plato and Aristotle have survived for over two thousand years, and were one of the cornerstones of what became the first universities in Europe.

‘University’ comes from universitas magistrorum et scholarium, meaning a union of masters and students. The University of Bologna seems to be the longest running university still in existence, as its first school began in 1088. The universities of the medieval era were monastic institutions where Latin was the universal language of lecturing, and they were centred on a standard curriculum. The Trivium contained the basic education, involving grammar, rhetoric and logic (dialectics), and prepared students for the Quadrivium, consisting of arithmetic, geometry, music and astronomy. Specialization in a specific field still involved some mastery of subjects that we today may be inclined to mistakenly view as irrelevant. One may conjecture this was to ensure that scholars were of a certain calibre, and able to draw from different disciplines in their work. It is from this European tradition from which Harvard University was partially modelled; as the oldest university in America, founded in Cambridge, Massachusetts in 1636, it influenced later Ivy League colleges.

One can see that our ideas have greatly changed, though this is only evident if we look beyond what we’ve been told. The university today is no longer really a provider of moral guidance. One can hope we take Plato to heart, but our concerns in this hyper-economy involve viewing our post-secondary careers simply as a means to an end, not something that may throw unwelcome wrenches into our plans as we discover things about ourselves that may be inconvenient.

The increased enrolment in university is also indicative of the recognition that a degree is a status symbol. There are actually significant differences between concepts like education, intelligence and knowledge, but our society narrowly accepts that a degree must indicate a higher rung on the ladder. That someone may have coasted through their courses is not immediately evident, nor is the independently learned scholar who dropped out viewed with much respect if their consumption of literature equates to a Masters level but is not “proven” and achieved by passing through the system. This opens up questions of class, where even an earned degree is of little worth if you are not climbing the prescribed path of your profession in a socially acceptable way and “doing something with it.”

Today, education is being pushed as a necessity regardless of the fact that the job market cannot even accommodate every worker seeking a job, let alone jobs requiring a degree. Thus, the case for limited enrolment. The opportunity to pursue higher education needs to be more thoroughly determined prior to granting admission. Those seeking employment opportunities also have the option of enrolling in skills-specific college programs rather than pursuing scholarship that requires an aptitude and interest that may be inherently lacking.

With the policy of No Child Left Behind, however, the testing ground for academic rigour is no longer the high school, as grading curves become inflated. This has only led to a woefully unprepared freshman class whose presence drops the standard for many others.

During my first undergraduate program at UofT fifteen years ago, for instance, professors were not as forthcoming about what may be on the final examination as they are today: failure was a real possibility. Though I think McMaster is an outstanding school in every sense, I do feel that the narrow passageways going through MUSC have gotten a bit too crowded. But this then also touches upon the University’s current need to financially survive.

A book published last year, Academically Adrift, offers a very bleak picture of education in America, where too many first-year students enticed to experience college life wind up dropping out, indebted. Two recent articles in the New York Times surmise that we have betrayed intellectual culture, and I tend to agree. As someone who has seen every single Woody Allen film, my idea of the intellectual is somewhat informed by his account of professionals in Manhattan during the 1970s and ‘80s, as they discussed complex issues, waiting in line for tickets to a Kurosawa film. This was before the era of American Pie and its successors shaped a revamped vision of Animal House as the new theme for college campuses across North America.

Not all are partying, however. Some are barely getting by as they work and try to pass their courses. Others are multitasking, involved in clubs and sports, and interning for free. Though one may achieve a stellar resume, it’s clear that our education is also getting co-opted by higher societal demands. Without the freedom to delve further beyond the syllabus into at least the few subjects that truly interest us, how well-rounded are we really? When else will we get a chance to be students and be valued for that if not while in university?

For both the slackers and the serious, it’s clear that the less time we spend on actual academics, the less the degree we earn is ultimately worth.

Farzeen Foda

Senior News Editor

 

“We see no reason why Ontario cannot have the best public services in the world – with the proviso that they must come at a cost Ontarians can afford,” said a report from the Commission on the Reform of Ontario’s Public Services, released on Feb. 15.

The report outlines recommendations for the reallocation of provincial funding in numerous public service domains – including post-secondary education – in an effort to revitalize Ontario’s economic prospects without increasing taxes.

The plan suggests a systematic reduction in program spending while avoiding the privatization of healthcare and education. The report clearly indicates the need to invest in those domains that can bring about future gains.

One such domain is post-secondary education, in which five key objectives were outlined: it must educate an increasing proportion of the population, contribute to equality in social and economic outcomes, provide a foundation for lifelong learning, foster innovation and efficiently deliver quality education.

Quality of post-secondary education has seen a decline across the Province as a result of well-recognized factors, including a greater number of sessional instructors, larger class sizes and reduced student-professor interaction.

Additionally, Ontario currently supports a system with the lowest per-student grant funding in Canada, paving the way for increases in tuition that exceed the inflation rate.

A tuition-freeze as a solution has not been identified to be in the best interests of students, as it would likely diminish the university experience and the quality of education.

The report recommends a maximum of 1.5 per cent annual increase in post-secondary education funding. With respect to tuition increases, the report supports the current five per cent ceiling on tuition increases, but contends that individual institutions hold the responsibility of allocating funding to their programs within the ceiling.

A mere 1.5 per cent increase in funding for post-secondary education is not expected to keep pace with the increasing demand for higher education or inflation, thus calling on individual institutions to “find efficiencies to preserve, if not enhance quality.”

A wide-spread concern for post-secondary students is the lack of dedication to education on the part of professors.

“I have, with some professors, felt like they would much rather be anywhere else except in front of the classroom talking to us,” said Ankita Dubey, a fourth-year Psychology student at McMaster.

The report calls for a revision to research funding structures and more rewards and incentives for effective teaching practices. A shift in favour of research spread across the province between 1997 and 2003, when funding for research tripled. This ultimately came at a cost to the quality of education as educators shifted focus to research in the hopes of flagging their institution as “world-class research centres.”

With reallocation of resources, opportunities for students to engage in more self-learning endeavours such as internships, independent study, experiential learning and opportunities to study abroad can be expanded.

Increasingly, colleges and universities are working in collaboration, thus the report recommends that students with a minimum of two years of college completed with a minimum academic standing, should be able to transfer into the university system. Further, no new post-secondary programs shall be initiated without a compelling justification.

While the report allots an insufficient increase in post-secondary funding of 1.5 per cent, it suggests that, if the Province cannot stay within this cap on annual growth, the government must consider sacrificing the recent Ontario Tuition Grant.

Don Drummond, the chair of the Commission on the Reform of Ontario’s Public Services, is currently a Matthews Fellow in Global Public Policy at Queen’s University. Previously, he worked for the federal Department of Finance and TD Economics, holding increasingly prestigious positions, conducting analyses of policies influencing economic performance.

The comprehensive review came as a necessity after the Ontario government’s 2010-11 deficit far exceeded that of any other province, reaching 23 per cent of provincial GDP. Subsequent projections concluded that if current economic practices continue, the province could see its deficit more than double by 2017-18, reaching nearly 51 per cent of the province’s GDP.

The revised plan, called “Our Preferred Scenario,” estimates a deficit of approximately 37 per cent of provincial GDP in 2017-18. Nevertheless, the report contends that Ontario’s fiscal situation is far from desperate, though early intervention can mitigate the possibility of reaching the economic crises seen in other countries in recent years.

“Decisive, firm and early action is required to get off this slippery, and ultimately destructive slope,” Drummond stated in his opening letter to Premier Dalton McGuinty and Ontario’s finance minister Dwight Duncan.

Vanaja Sivakumar

The Silhouette

 

Many McMaster students can recall feelings of frustration with respect to the teaching practices common at the University, and consequently have ideas to improve the situation.

These pursuits, often hindered by a lack of communication, paved the way to the McMaster Seminar on Higher Education, featuring a series of discussions about the issues plaguing higher education.

The overall aim is to encourage dialogue and inspire critical thought in McMaster University and the Hamilton community. It emphasizes the importance of academics and society as a whole, and how both can learn from one another.

The seminar aims to appeal to a range of audiences, encouraging attendance and expression from students, the direct recipients of educational change.

The February session of the five-part speaker series, hosted by the Office of the President, proved to be both informative and insightful. This seminar invited the President’s Teaching & Learning Award winners: Dr. Ann Herring, Dr. Sheila Sammon, Dr. Patty Solomon and Dr. Jean Wilson.

Discussion topics were centered on the development of successful community-engaged learning programs and projects at McMaster University. The panelists shared their experience and expertise in conceptualizing, developing, and implementing community engaged projects within their own teaching strategies and the feedback they received from their students.

The seminar commenced with the moderator, Sue Baptiste, professor in the School of Rehabilitation Science, prompting discussion among the panellists about their own teaching experiences. Baptiste began by asking panellists to share their opinions about the meaning of “community” and how it is linked to learning.

Dr. Herring shared her own experience as a professor of Anthropology, describing a project she assigned, which required her students to compile a book about Hamilton. She expressed that her students were happy to be engaged with the Hamilton community and not solely confined to the campus educational scene.

Other panelists answered the question  by drawing on their personal experience such as Dr. Soloman, who shared his experience working with HIV patients and how learning from them, in terms of their social disabilities rather then the actual virology of the disease, was more beneficial to both the patient and the recipient learner.

Dr. Wilson, being a literary scholar, used her love of analyzing and discussing themes in famous novels as a venue for community engagement lessons which foster an ability to discover new, unique perspectives.

However, no matter what academic background each panelist came from, the overall theme of “learning from the environment around us” was prevalent.

Each panelist expressed the need to eschew the idea of “tokenism” as a way of connecting with the surrounding community.

The refined model of community engagement calls for “giving and receiving,” a form of knowledge that is the best form of community engagement.

Wendy Chi & Amanda Mihoub Wright

McMaster Debating Society

 

Wendy: Statistics about what students are doing after university are painting a less than optimistic picture of the future of undergrads across North America. In many cases, recent grads find themselves in one of three scenarios: unemployed, working in a field unrelated to their education, or returning to school for another degree. As a result, students have begun to question whether the knowledge garnered during their time in university will translate to finding a career and performing well in it. Sadly, for a large proportion of students, it won’t.  At a certain fundamental level of the current system, this actually makes sense. Students often forget that most universities are, first and foremost, research institutions. Teaching undergrads is only a secondary function of these schools and a side job to professors.  What does this mean for students? Aside from the fact that their needs are not always a top priority, there is also an inherent bias in what they are taught that favours theoretical concepts over real world applications. Course content and skill development are presented from a research perspective because that is what professors do for a living. It’s no wonder that more and more people end up pursuing graduate studies, since that is the natural path to follow in a university setting.

Amanda: Wendy is correct when she says that a university degree no longer guarantees employment; however, I do not agree that it is a result of universities failing to teach workplace skills or the theoretical nature of university material. Rather, the devaluation of academic credentials is due to many other factors, such as the expansion of universities since the 1970s. Even though universities are geared towards research, students do develop skills that are necessary for workplace success and employment. Universities offer programs such as internships and co-ops with the explicit goal of fostering students’ workplace skills and to give them concrete, hands-on experience in the career field that they wish to pursue.  As well, universities simulate workplace settings; students learn that they must attend class for a certain amount of time in order to take notes and to succeed, they must respect deadlines or they will be penalized, and they must develop a certain level of skill in order to obtain their university degree. Most importantly, they learn that this must all be done on their own initiative, and that the responsibility for the quality of their work is theirs alone.

WC: I agree that internships and co-operative education programs can be an excellent way to supplement education with practical work experience. The problem is that at many universities, McMaster included, not enough students are participating in these programs. Enrollment in co-op programs is limited to only a privileged few students who can reap the benefits of the experience. In addition, the fact that the co-op schedule disrupts extracurriculars and other year-long commitments can be a major disadvantage to some. As for Amanda’s claim that university simulates a workplace setting, my answer is yes and no. Yes there is a certain structure to the university experience that translates to the workplace (deadlines, schedules, etc.) but is it enough? Although basic organization and time management are important, the relevance of other heavily emphasized skills, such as essay writing, conducting secondary research and test taking, is often limited to academia. It is equally important for students to acquire the interpersonal, communication and leadership skills that are prerequisites for success in the real world.

AMW: I agree with Wendy’s assertion that students need to acquire interpersonal, communication, and leadership skills in order to succeed in the real world. However, these skills can be acquired at university through the group work that goes on in classes, club membership, and involvement in student life. As well, a lot of the skills developed through school work, such as effective writing and communication skills, are actually very transferable and extremely important in many workplace settings. Students have agency, they are not simply passive actors, and they cannot expect to be guaranteed skills and abilities by simply attending a post-secondary institution. Students must actively work on their employability. Yes, there are not as many co-op’s and internships available to students as there should be, but that is not the universities fault but rather the result of the current economic climate. Choosing between club involvement and co-op may be a tough decision for some, but it is a sacrifice that students must be willing to make. It is a tough and competitive job market, but it is not solely universities’ responsibility to ensure that students are prepared.

WC: Amanda makes a good point that students have a role is seeking out their own personal development. However, that doesn’t change the reality that students spend years of their lives in school and thousands of dollars on tuition with the expectation that a university degree will make them better off in the job market. Although the transferable skills gained from group work and extracurricular involvement can help accomplish this, these activities usually come second to the independent study required to perform well in classes. Regardless of their autonomy and initiative, students can only operate within the constraints that the university places on them. Consequently, it is up to the faculty and administration to make changes if they want to produce graduates who are ready for the challenges of the workforce. Programs and services such as co-op, internships, career fairs, career counselling, and other workshops are a great start, but they have to be expanded to serve more students so that they are provided every opportunity to develop their employability.

AMW: A clear-cut answer to this issue does not exist. The current employment market requires an improved effort by both universities and students to increase the employability of students. Students need to be aware of the fact that a university degree does not guarantee them employment and take initiative to improve their own employability and transferable skills. Universities should also offer more career services and place more emphasis on the importance of employability to students; however, universities are a place of higher learning, academia and research and it is unreasonable to expect them to make students’ employability their main focus above all else. The devaluation of credentials has already occurred and it is unlikely that the times of merely having a undergraduate degree and obtaining guaranteed employment will ever return.

Kacper Niburski

Assistant News Editor

If there would be one word to characterize the current motif in education it would be optimism.

Despite overwhelmingly large class sizes, climbing tuition fees, and the increasing reliance on private partnerships, educators have shown nothing short of bravery and courage in an uncertain, and at times, questionable future.

This was no better captured in president of McMaster University, Patrick Deane’s, letter to the McMaster community: Forward with Integrity. 

Issued on Sept. 21, the document is not so much of a letter as it is a declaration of reassurance, recognition, and hope.

In it, Deane lauded a variety of educational endeavors, including the efforts of the ever-growing role of experiential, interdisciplinary, and community based learning.

But such praise was sordid when compared to the variety of obstacles that still needed to be recognized, and more importantly, delt with.

Among the many, the rarefying of material and commercial funds, the loss of personal interaction in the digital age, and lingering questions of remolding education itself remained a persistent standard not quite met nor realized in between the eloquent paragraphs and sentences.

In light of such concerns, it was determined that in order to create a mutually stimulating environment for the student, the professor, and all the faculty in between, a holistic view was required, and at McMaster, this was simply not occurring on systematic level.

In the months following Deane’s letter, a variety of open forums took place as a means to foster, and perhaps reanimate, the conversation on McMaster’s shortcomings and accolades alike.

On Nov. 24, the second of such discussions was spearheaded by Deane and MSU president, Matthew-Dillon-Leitch, to an audience composed primarily of SRA members and a few concerned students.

Deane began by saying, “Everyone contends that the education experience is meant to be unchanging. Everything is fixed. This is not the case.”

Explaining that much of the education model is based on Harvard University in the early 20th century, and many of the problems are age-old in their inception, Deane added, “Don’t assume everything is tightly circumscribed. It is not. This University is able decide how much this course is worth and how much it isn’t, for example.”

To this, Dillon-Leitch noted that there is an overwhelming temptation to, “redefine what university means. It’s an approach of balance.”

As to where this balance reaches equilibrium, and to what end are things circumscribed, students voiced an array of concerns and fears.

A never-ending rat race, fruitless degrees, students being forgotten in the educational standard, and many more were among those raised.

Both Deane and Dillon-Leitch mirrored each other in their response.

While it is true that there will be constraints in any attempt for change, and it would be foolish to minimize the reality of the constraints, the University can, and is trying, to operate more efficiently. Whether this is to the end of undergraduate studies or graduate research, efforts are being made on all fronts – some successful, others not.

Only through recognition of these successes, and admitting those that have failed, can one move forward with integrity – the entire embodiment of Deane’s September letter.

But it is here in the forward movement where problems arise.

Without a practical and overarching plan, skepticism will amount. Without clear leadership, demoralization will fester. Talk of action can go on until time itself ends, but without action – systematic, broad, and unrelenting action – such talk will be futile at best.

Perhaps this is why the letter itself is not called simply moving forward. Perhaps.

But a second consideration was forgotten at the forum. What if what we seek to fix was built broken?

In between the speeches, rebuttals, and general conversation, few seemed to have recognized that education itself may be the perpetrator of its own problems. Because any University serves as a means of its nation, and thus is hedged in by society’s demands, education appears to require analysis.

Here, Deane admitted, imperfection amounts. “Grading is an imperfect thing and most of the teaching is abhorrent,” he said.

True as this may be, the mantra of optimism still echoed. Deane concluded that, “We have to be optimistic because we have the potential to do something fantastic.”

And yet with only 50 students in attendance at the forum out of a possible 25,000 students, with an ever increasing privatization of education, and an entirely microscopic system built on a macrocosmic national scale, it must be asked whether the next years in education will be more of the same or something else entirely.

If such an answer could be found within the University itself, then the problems would have been fixed by now.

Christina Pugliese

Silhouette Staff

Keen on learning a foreign language?

Before hastily reaching for pen and paper, one might first consider availing oneself of an arguably more valuable tool – the power of conversation.

Indeed, it was such a premise upon which this year’s biannual Language Café was based; an event hosted by McMaster’s International Student Services at Bridges Café on Nov.8.

With 15 language workshops to choose from and an array of appetizing vegetarian dishes, the evening served as a venue for both local and international students as well as members of the greater community to exchange knowledge and explore their interests in the realm of language.

An idea put forth by a recent graduate of the Bachelor of Health Science program in March 2010, the interdisciplinary event acts as a foregathering of various student cultural societies, including the McMaster French Club, McMaster Japanese Connection, the Organization of Latin American Students (OLAS), as well as individual exchange students from around the world.

During the one hour Language Café, participants were offered basic instruction by volunteer facilitators whose role was to guide conversation within small group settings.

A myriad of language workshops were available for those in attendance, including English, French, Spanish, Mandarin, German, Japanese, Korean, Vietnamese, Russian, Punjabi, Urdu, Farsi, Polish, Hindi, Malay, and American Sign Language.

Matthew Kubicki, one of the primary organizers of the event and Polish workshop facilitator, feels that the casual atmosphere encompassing the Café is instrumental in fulfilling its mission.

“Learning a language formally in a classroom can be stressful, whereas here you are learning among people who are your age in a more informal environment. It’s more conversational,” explained Kubicki.

Although one can hardly expect to emerge speaking fluently after merely an hour-long tutorial, Kubicki noted that this is “not necessarily the goal.” Rather, the Language Café aims to “expand people’s views of the world and broaden their exposure to different languages and cultures.”

In this regard, the event served as a springboard for individuals to discover what various cultures have to offer and to learn from their like-minded peers.

Andres Krisch, member of OLAS and third-time Language Café Spanish facilitator, mirrored this sentiment.

“It’s really cool to be able to educate people on the culture and the language, to provide that spark of interest,” said Krisch.

Having come a long way since its inception in 2010, event coordinator Amy Tang hopes to see the Language Café expand in subsequent years.

She further discussed preliminary plans “to create an online database that would allow students to speak different languages and interact with each other.”

Whether a beginner or fluent speaker, “there are many ways [for students] to get involved,” she noted.