President Jack Lightstone wrote the opinion piece “Canada needs all universities to do research; Brock’s president weighs in on the debate over whether the ‘Big 5’ should get the lion’s share of research funding” that appeared in the Globe and Mail on March 8. The article argues against research dollars being spent only at Canada’s largest research institutions. Accompanying the article was a photo of a former Cool Climate Oenology and Viticulture Research Institute researcher.

An excerpt:

Canada needs all of its universities to contribute to post-graduate education. Four or five, even 10 or 13 institutions, could not possibly produce the numbers without becoming mass-education, graduate student factories — precisely the wrong model for post-graduate education.

We would be turning back the clock more than 50 years, when only a limited number of Canadian universities offered graduate programs in a wide array of fields. At that time, many of Canada’s best undergraduates went elsewhere for post-graduate education, and many did not return.

• globecampus.ca ~ GlobeCampus Report — Comment: Canada needs all universities to do research