Merge this

Time for some local Saint John content...

This morning the CBC aired a report about a group of businessmen that want the University of New Brunswick's Saint John campus to merge with the local community college, creating a "centre of excellence" that will offer a variety of trades and degrees, the choice of which will be "market driven" and make Saint John's post secondary education "world class," in the process getting the NBCC some badly needed new facilities.

Now, it is unlikely that Saint John will ever be "world class" at anything, but we can get to that later. The bit about market forces determining the degrees and trades to be offered sounds, at least to my ears, that the muckemucks (bigshots) that already have a tight hold on everything that goes on in Saint John will decide, based on their perception of the way the economy is going, what knowledge is valuable and what isn't. This is objectionable for two reasons:

(1) knowledge has value beyond purely economic, most universities have the idea of learning as valuble for its own sake buried somewhere in thier founding. Research performed in Canada's universities has helped improve our lives by simply understanding the world around us more fully.

(2) post secondary institutions require as much independence as possible to be effective in education and research. They are not simply places that the Irvings or the McCains or Ganongs can call up and place an order for a quantity of tradesmen or professionals to be delivered to them by a certain date to react to "market forces."

As a professional myself I know I am expected to do more than simply keep myself employed. We are expected to contribute to the body of knowledge in our field and to act in a fashion that represents the best of our profession. In short, I am not a commodity, not a dollar value, and not something to be ordered up from the local "polytechnic institute".

So in summary I hope that UNB rejects the merger, even if in a characteristically daft moment the local politians bow to the will of big business. The NBCC should also be taking a serious look at what its goals are and whom it serves.