INTRODUCTION

Internationally, the term polytechnic has been used to refer to two different types of post-secondary institutions. One is a university that emphasizes applied knowledge, the connection between theory and practice, as well as technology-based fields of study, often along with other fields of study. The other is a college-type institution that provides vocationally oriented education at the higher level, often but not always along with other levels of vocational programs. The focus of this chapter is the second of these two types of polytechnic institutions.

The chapter draws substantially upon three publications with which the author has been involved: Degrees of opportunity: Broadening student access by increasing institutional differentiation in Ontario higher education (Jones & Skolnik, 2009); Situating Ontario’s colleges between the American and European models for providing opportunity for the attainment of baccalaureate degrees in applied fields of study (Skolnik, 2016b); and CAAT baccalaureates: What has been their impact on students and colleges? (Wheelahan et al., 2017). In addition to attempting to bring together data and perspectives from these three sources, the chapter elaborates further on some of the information and ideas contained in those documents. For example, it provides more detail on the polytechnics developed under the binary policy in England and Wales in the 1960s. The more I have studied the evolution of technical colleges over the past half century, the more I am struck by what a revolutionary development the English polytechnic was and the impact it has had on ideas about the provision of applied education. The next section identifies some of the key features of those institutions that provided the original model of the type of polytechnic institution that is the focus of this chapter.

The section that follows describes the non-university polytechnic institutions in several European countries and illustrates what I referred to in Skolnik (2016b) as the European Model for facilitating baccalaureate degree attainment in applied fields of study. Drawing particularly upon Kyvik and Lepori (2010), that section provides additional information on these institutions beyond what is provided by Jones and Skolnik (2009). It shows that these institutions are, in some ways, similar to Ontario colleges—for example, with respect to faculty teaching loads and the extent of faculty involvement in research. The next section traces the evolution of the role of Ontario’s colleges in providing degree programs from their founding to their arguably belated acquisition of the authority to award bachelor’s degrees. It draws upon the Wheelahan et al. (2017) report to provide a profile of degree provision in the college sector.

Two differences stand out between European polytechnics and Ontario colleges with regard to the scale of degree programming. One is that degree programs constitute a small percentage of the activity of Ontario colleges, whereas the delivery of degree programs is the predominant function of polytechnics in several European countries. The other is that college degree programs account for a small percentage of total undergraduate enrolment in Ontario, while polytechnics account for a large percentage in several European countries. Successive sections of the chapter are devoted to discussing the implications of each of these differences. The first of those sections delves deeper than the previously cited publications into the discrepancy between colleges and universities in the proportion of students who obtain a bachelor’s degree and the opportunity for colleges to reduce that disparity through their bachelor’s degree provision. The other section considers questions pertaining to the appropriate scale of the Ontario college bachelor’s degree (CBD). This is followed by discussions of reforms needed to help Ontario colleges increase their baccalaureate programming, implications for system redesign, and the pros and cons of the formal adoption of the term polytechnic. The chapter ends with a few brief concluding comments.

Two important limitations of the chapter should be noted. The first is that the subject of the chapter is one about which there is not a lot of published information. For example, there appears to be relatively little in the way of collections of essays about polytechnics on the European continent other than Taylor et al. (2008) and Kyvik and Lepori (2010). There is much more material on the institutions of technical and further education (TAFEs) in Australia and the further education colleges (FECs) in England, but rather than constituting possible models for Ontario colleges, these institutions are going through struggles similar to those of Ontario colleges in finding their roles in degree provision (Wheelahan et al., 2009; Parry, 2013). Closer to home, it is difficult to find a single publication that identifies polytechnic institutions in Canada and describes their characteristics.

The other limitation pertains to the elusive nature of the term polytechnic. A 1980 Ontario Ministry of Colleges and Universities Green Paper on Polytechnic Education (Ministry of Colleges and Universities, 1980) noted that there is no standard definition of polytechnic education, and variation in use of the term polytechnic is probably greater now than it was then. It is difficult even to identify polytechnic institutions because the term is used so infrequently in names of institutions. Moreover, use of the term in institutional names appears to be on the decline. For example, in New Zealand, the names Polytechnic and Institute of Technology have been used interchangeably, and the sector containing these institutions has been referred to as the Institutes of Technology and Polytechnics sector (Doyle, 2015). At one time, 16 of New Zealand’s Institutes of Technology and Polytechnics (ITPs) referred to themselves as polytechnics, whereas by 2017 only five did. In Australia, as of 2017, none of the universities (Australian Government, 2017) and only one institute of technical and further education used the term in its name (TAFE Directors Australia, 2017). Two other TAFEs did use the term until recently but have dropped it from their names. Similarly, one of the few post-secondary institutions in Canada to have had Polytechnic in its name within the past decade, Southern Alberta Institute of Technology, dropped the term a few years ago.

A search of the Carnegie Classification of Institutions (2017) in the United States found that only 11 post-secondary institutions out of 4,665 used the word polytechnic in their name. While a campus of one state university recently changed its name from Institute of Technology to Polytechnic, in two other cases polytechnic institutions recently merged with universities and gave up the name Polytechnic as they became constituent schools within the universities. All except one of the institutions in the United States that uses the word polytechnic in its name is the university type of polytechnic institution. There appear to be considerable differences in the research profiles of these institutions. One of them offers 29 PhD programs, has 34 research centres, and annually conducts more than $100 million of research.

The variation in use of the term polytechnic is evident both within and between the two categories of post-secondary institutions noted in the first paragraph of this chapter. Thus, instead of two distinct models of polytechnic institutions, one could envisage polytechnics as arrayed along a continuum.¹ While all the institutions would share a commitment to applied learning and the integration of theory and practice, they would differ in other respects. At one end of the continuum would be those that offer few if any sub-baccalaureate programs but many doctoral programs, in addition to master’s and bachelor’s degree programs, and that include the expectation that faculty time is divided equally between research and teaching. At the other end of the continuum would be those that offer no master’s or doctoral programs and have much of their enrolment in diploma, certificate, apprenticeship, and adult upgrading programs, and in which faculty have only a modest involvement in research. With sufficient data, it might be possible to locate different institutions at points along such a continuum, but gathering such data was beyond the scope of this chapter.

ORIGINS OF THE CONTEMPORARY POLYTECHNIC

The contemporary idea of a polytechnic institution can be dated back to April 27, 1965, when the United Kingdom’s Secretary of State for Education and Science, Anthony Crosland, announced a “binary policy” for higher education in England and Wales (Crosland, 1965). As Pratt (1997) has noted, the title “polytechnic” was not new in the United Kingdom and had in fact been used by some existing institutions since the late 19th century. What was new was the designation of polytechnics by the national government and the roles given to them within the framework of a comprehensive higher education policy.

The binary policy recognized the existence of two distinct types of higher education institutions with different traditions. On the one hand, there were the universities with their traditions of autonomy and exclusivity, and their own internally determined goals, which included the “preservation, extension and dissemination of knowledge ‘for its own sake’” (Pratt, 1997, p. 9). On the other hand were the institutions founded in the technical college tradition, which valued responsiveness to societal needs and relative openness of admission, and had a strong vocational education orientation. The minister was concerned that the only way an institution in the technical college sector could increase its standards and advance its institutional status was to cross over to the university realm, which meant exchanging its vocational orientation for an academic one and ceasing to serve the people for whom the institution was originally created. Such a system, he maintained,

must inevitably depress and degrade both morale and standards in the non-university sector. If the universities have a ‘class’ monopoly of degree-giving, and if every college which achieves high standards moves automatically into the University Club, then the residual public [technical college] sector becomes a permanent poor relation, perpetually deprived of its brightest ornaments and with a permanently and openly inferior status. This must be bad for morale, bad for standards, and productive only of an unhealthy competitive mentality. (Crosland, 1965, p. 1)

The objective of the binary policy was to redress the academic and social inferiority of the technical college sector by enabling these institutions to offer vocationally oriented programs at a higher level, which involved adopting the same degree structure as the universities while maintaining the other institutional characteristics that differentiated them from universities. Pratt (1997, p. 12) notes that this was a “radical” policy because it challenged the pre-eminence of the universities. Given how entrenched the class system was in higher education, it was also a very ambitious policy.

From 1968 to 1973, over 50 technical and other colleges were amalgamated into 30 designated polytechnics. While the polytechnics in England and Wales offered programs at both the certificate and diploma levels, and the bachelor’s and postgraduate degree levels, activity shifted increasingly from the non-degree to the degree realm as the institutions evolved (Pratt, 1997). By 1978, the ratio of degree programs to diploma programs was 3.7:1 (Ministry of Colleges and Universities, 1980). By 1988, only 5% of activity was at a “non-advanced” level, compared to 55% in 1965 (Pratt, 1997). The polytechnics were able to shed much of their lower-level activity by shifting these programs to other types of colleges, of which there were more than 300 (Parry, 2009). In the mid-’70s, according to Parry, in about 200 of the other colleges, fewer than 10% of the students were taking advanced courses, compared to 90% in the polytechnics, while about 150 further education colleges concentrated entirely on non-advanced courses. The polytechnics constituted fewer than 10% of the non-university institutions. Research in the polytechnics was said to have accounted for between 10% and 20% of faculty time, compared to 50% in universities, and it was intended mainly to support teaching rather than as a primary activity (Matterson, 1981).

The contribution of the binary policy—not only in England and Wales, but in other jurisdictions that adopted similar policies—was to provide a framework in which polytechnic education could develop and flourish. Binary systems of higher education provided a protected space in which innovative educators could experiment with new forms of advanced vocational education rather than being able to raise academic standards only by emulating practices in universities. Because the institutions in which this experimentation took place were frequently called polytechnics, the outcomes of these experiments—and of the associated thinking about what it means to offer vocational education at the highest possible level—have often been described as reflecting the idea of polytechnic education.

The idea of polytechnic education has been described in many different ways. In this author’s view, the common elements are respect for applied knowledge and applied learning; offering applied learning at the highest possible level, which in practice means at least the baccalaureate level; attention to the relationship between practice and theory; practice-based organization of curriculum; and extensive use of inductive learning and experiential learning. The polytechnic idea also includes greater openness to students with diverse academic and social backgrounds, including those with previous technical/vocational education backgrounds.

Ironically, the country that introduced the non-university polytechnic to the world abolished that institutional form in 1992 as it converted the polytechnics into universities. The polytechnics in England and Wales were thus responsible not only for displaying a new form of post-secondary education institution, but also for displaying the instability of that particular form of institution. This experience was to be replicated elsewhere. At one time, Australia had a system of institutions that, while not formally called polytechnics, played a role similar to that of the polytechnics in England and Wales (Harman, 1991; Mahony, 1992). The mission of the Colleges of Advanced Education (CAEs) was to provide higher vocational education in response to community needs, along with providing diploma and certificate programs. Australia’s binary system was abolished in the early 1990s, and the CAEs were merged with existing universities or, in a few cases, became universities. In Ireland there is a movement underway now to merge groups of polytechnics into universities (McGuire, 2016).

In the years following the conversion of the former English polytechnics into universities, many of the further education colleges have increasingly taken on some of the functions previously performed by the polytechnics. For many years, FECs have provided degree credit coursework through various types of partnerships with universities (Parry, 2009). However, recently there has been a movement to allow some of the FECs to award degrees on their own. In 2013, a commission recommended that large FECs “be given the ability to award degrees and such colleges should be granted the renewed use of the title ‘polytechnic’” (IPPR Commission on the Future of Higher Education, 2013, p. 46).

The commission went on to say that giving these institutions polytechnic status would “carve out a distinctive place in our tertiary education system for institutions that providing higher-level vocational qualifications” (IPPR Commission on the Future of Higher Education, 2013, p. 47). In a comment that evoked memories of Mr. Crosland’s 1965 speech, the commission added that polytechnic status would be “a mark of vocational excellence,” signifying that the university title would not be the “only form of high status” in the post-secondary education system (IPPR Commission on the Future of Higher Education, 2013, p. 47). The fact that the idea of the polytechnic re-emerged in England 25 years after its material manifestation was abolished is testimony to the power of that idea.

POLYTECHNICS IN EUROPE AND NEW ZEALAND

During the three decades following the development of a polytechnic sector in England and Wales, several European countries established binary systems that included an applied higher education sector similar to the polytechnics in England and Wales (Taylor et al., 2008). Many of these binary systems continue to flourish, and some new ones were created after the polytechnics in England and Wales were gone.

The institutions in the non-university, degree-granting sectors in the binary higher education systems of continental European countries have such names as Fachhochschulen (Austria, Germany, Switzerland), Hogescholen (Netherlands, Belgium), and Ammattikorkeakoulu (Finland). In some cases (Finland, for example), the local term has commonly been translated as polytechnic (Välimaa & Neuvonen-Rauhala, 2008), but a variety of other names have been used in English translation as well, e.g., college of professional education, institute of technology, and university college. Although some observers used the term polytechnic as a generic name for this institutional type, Teichler (2008) notes that a consensus never emerged on a common name for degree-awarding institutions that were an alternative to traditional universities in Europe. During the past decade, however, there has been a movement toward the adoption of a common name for these institutions: University of Applied Sciences (UAS). This term now has official recognition in several countries, including Finland, the Netherlands, Germany, and Switzerland (Kyvik & Lepori, 2010). In many countries, UASs today play a role similar to that of polytechnics in England and Wales three decades ago.

Because the post-secondary institutions that in some countries were once called polytechnics are now called universities of applied sciences (e.g., the Ammattikorkeakoulu in Finland), this chapter will use those terms interchangeably and treat all institutions that use the name University of Applied Sciences or are partners in an international network of such institutions, UASNet, as polytechnics (UASNet, 2017). The countries from which the member institutions of UASNet come are Belgium, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Ireland, Lithuania, the Netherlands, and Portugal. As the institutes of technology in Ireland are partner institutions in UASNet, they are regarded as polytechnics in this chapter.

As the general characteristics of European polytechnics have been described in detail elsewhere (Doern, 2008; Jones & Skolnik, 2009; Kyvik & Lepori, 2010; Skolnik, 2016a, 2016b; Taylor et al., 2008), this section will briefly highlight some important characteristics. The primary mission of these institutions is “to provide theoretical and practical training with an explicit professional orientation” (de Weert & Leijnse, 2010, p. 199).

In Europe, polytechnics account for a substantial proportion of bachelor’s degrees, ranging from nearly one-third in Germany, to nearly half in Ireland, to about three-fifths in Finland and two-thirds in the Netherlands (Skolnik, 2016a). European polytechnics are predominantly degree-granting institutions. In Germany in 2008, 55% of programs led to a bachelor’s degree and 33.8% to a master’s degree (Kulicke & Stahlecker, 2010). As of 2013–14, honours bachelor’s degree programs accounted for 43.3% of enrollment in Irish institutes of technology, with an additional 29% in ordinary bachelor’s degree programs and 5% in master’s degree programs (Higher Education Authority, 2016). As noted earlier, a similar type of post-secondary institution, referred to either as an institute of technology or a polytechnic, also exists in New Zealand; these institutions account for about 20% of undergraduate enrolment (New Zealand Ministry of Education, 2017).

In most countries, there are substantially more polytechnics than universities, as Table 1 shows.

Table 1
Number of Polytechnics and Universities in Selected Countries

NOTE. The numbers in this table were obtained in November 2017 from a search of national statistical agencies and government ministries that oversee higher education.

While engineering and business are major areas of study in most European polytechnics, there is great variation in subject area mix among and within different countries. In Germany about half the students are in engineering and natural science fields such as agriculture, forestry, mathematics, and health, but about half are also in social science and humanities-based fields such as economics, art, and linguistic and cultural sciences (Kulicke & Stahlecker, 2010). Fields typically covered in German polytechnics are information technology, various health specialities, design, and social work.

Faculty normally have substantially larger teaching loads than in universities, and most do not have a PhD. In Germany, 18 semester hours is a common teaching load. Faculty may obtain a reduction in teaching hours if they are involved in large-scale research projects, but only a small number of teachers are able to do so (Kulicke & Stahlecker, 2010). As of 2006, only 3.7% of academic staff in Dutch polytechnics had a PhD, while the highest academic credential for 45.8% was a master’s degree from a university, and for 46.7% it was a bachelor’s degree, the vast majority of which had been earned in a UAS (de Weert & Leijnse, 2010). In Finland, 30.5% of senior lecturers had a PhD as of 2004, but senior lecturers comprised only 16% of academic staff. The PhD was uncommon among other ranks of teachers (Välimaa & Neuvonen-Rauhala, 2010).

Kyvik and Lepori (2010) note that within the past two decades research has become a more prominent function in UASs. They note also that research in these institutions is primarily of an applied nature and there are significant differences in research activity both within and among most jurisdictions. They suggest that in European UASs the two main rationales for undertaking research are to improve “the quality of professional education through enhanced research qualifications of teachers” and to provide “support to the regional economy and the improvement of knowledge transfer” (Kyvik & Lepori, 2010, p. 263). Research in UASs typically accounts for 10% or less of total expenditures, compared to 40% to 50% in universities, and relatively few faculty members of UASs are involved in research. For example, while UASs in the Netherlands account for a particularly large share of undergraduate enrolment, according to de Weert & Leijnse (2010), research in those institutions is “still an auxiliary function in the context of professional development and education” (p. 200). Some of the principal factors that limit faculty participation in research in UASs are high teaching loads and limitations on institutional funding for research.

Although there have been differences in what constitutes a polytechnic institution in different countries, two characteristics stand out from this brief international review of polytechnics. One is that such institutions are substantial providers of bachelor’s degrees, and in several countries they offer postgraduate degrees as well. Usually they account for a substantial proportion of bachelor’s degrees awarded in a country, and in some cases the majority of bachelor’s degrees. Similarly, degrees tend to constitute the majority or at least a substantial share of their awards, and polytechnics in some countries have ceased to offer sub-baccalaureate programs. The second noteworthy characteristic is that polytechnic institutions elsewhere are members of systems of such institutions rather than being the only institution or one of just a few of their type within a jurisdiction.

The Canadian experience with polytechnics differs from that of other countries with respect to these characteristics. With the exception of the British Columbia Institute of Technology, polytechnics in other provinces offer relatively small numbers of bachelor’s degree programs, and they are not members of multi-institution systems of polytechnics.

EVOLUTION OF ONTARIO COLLEGES TOWARD A POLYTECHNIC ROLE

The legislation for the establishment of Ontario’s colleges of applied arts and technology (CAATs) was introduced in 1965, the same year as the binary policy was announced in the United Kingdom. The original vision for Ontario’s colleges had several features in common with the system of polytechnics under development in England and Wales at the time. Both the CAATs and the polytechnics were intended to be separate from the universities and to provide an alternative form of post-secondary education for students who sought a more career-focused, experiential type of education. In fact, an OECD report in the early 1970s suggested that the next place where the binary sectors model of post-secondary education might be emerging after the United Kingdom was Ontario (OECD, 1973). However, there was one major difference between the Ontario CAATs and the English polytechnics. Unlike the English polytechnics, the CAATs were not given the authority to award degrees.

It is not entirely clear why the CAATs were not given this authority. According to Campbell (1975), the founders of the college system wanted the colleges to have “parity of esteem” with the universities (p. 65). Baker (2002) maintained that three-year diploma programs were introduced into the colleges “to underline the commitment to parity of esteem” (p. 12). At the time that the three-year diploma was introduced into the colleges, the three-year bachelor’s degree was quite common in Ontario universities. Thus, the idea of the colleges awarding degrees was not so far-fetched at the time. Not long after the colleges started operating, a major commission on post-secondary education recommended that they be authorized to award degrees for their three-year programs (Commission on Postsecondary Education in Ontario, 1972). The founders of the college system wanted the CAATs to be different from the universities, so perhaps they felt that awarding degrees would lead the colleges to emulate the universities in other ways too.

Possibly, it did not matter so much in the early years that the highest credential the colleges awarded was a three-year diploma and not a degree. However, as the degree acquired increased importance over the years, the idea that a college education was as advanced within vocational education as was an undergraduate university education within the realm of academic education was less convincing. Further, while the three-year advanced diploma remained in the most advanced credential in the college sector, the four-year bachelor’s degree became more prevalent in the university sector.

Acquiring the authority to award bachelor’s degrees was thus an important milestone in the movement of the colleges toward polytechnic status. The colleges were given this authority in 2000 and commenced their first degree programs in 2002. The following year, the government created the designation Institute of Technology and Advanced Learning. ITALs are allowed to offer up to 15% of their programming in the form of bachelor’s degrees, whereas the limit for other colleges is 5%. Five colleges (Conestoga, George Brown, Humber, Seneca, and Sheridan) have attained the status of ITAL, though not all use the term in their name or use it consistently.

As of September 2016, the colleges were offering 108 bachelor’s degree programs in total (Wheelahan et al., 2017). Two-thirds of the programs were offered by the four colleges with the largest numbers of bachelor’s degree programs—Humber, Sheridan, Seneca, and Conestoga. The five ITALs accounted for 73% of the degree programs, and the seven Ontario members of Polytechnics Canada accounted for 86%. The five ITALs also accounted for 86.6% of all enrolment in college degree programs. For the system as a whole, students in degree programs constituted 5.7% of all college students. Enrolment in college bachelor’s degree programs constituted about 3.6% of total undergraduate enrolment in Ontario (derived from Council of Ontario Universities, 2017, and Wheelahan et al., 2017). The largest percentage of enrolment in CBD programs was in applied arts (46.2%), followed by business (34.7%), technology (14.7%), and health (4.4%). The proportions of degree students in applied arts and business were substantially higher than their proportions of total college enrolment.

Although Ontario colleges are faced with similar financial constraints on faculty participation in research as are polytechnics in other jurisdictions, they have given increased attention to applied research in recent years. Ramdas (2017) investigated their commitment to research by exploring whether a college 1) had a website dedicated to its applied research, 2) was a member of the Colleges Ontario Network for Industry Innovation (CONII), and 3) listed applied research as one of its institutional objectives in its most recent strategic mandate agreement. Of the 24 colleges, 19 met the first condition, 21 met the second condition, and 18 met the third condition. Each of the seven Ontario members of Polytechnics Canada met all three conditions.
Fourteen Ontario colleges were among the 50 colleges and institutes in Canada that had the largest amounts of research income in 2017, and six Ontario colleges, led by Lambton College, were among the first 10 (Research Infosource Inc., 2018). The patterns were similar in the previous three years. Of course, research income is only one indicator of the potential impact of an institution’s research activities on its students, faculty, and community, and too much emphasis on research could jeopardize the focus on teaching, which is one of the core strengths of colleges.

The correlation among Ontario colleges between the number of bachelor’s degree programs and the amount of research income is quite weak. In 2017, the Ontario college with the greatest research income did not offer any bachelor’s degree programs, and only one of the next six Ontario colleges in the research income ranking list was among the largest providers of bachelor’s degrees. Of the 13 colleges offering at least one bachelor’s degree program in September 2016, three were not in the list of the 50 colleges in Canada with the greatest research income. Among the 10 colleges that were in the research income list and offered at least one bachelor’s degree program in 2016, the Spearman rank correlation coefficient between the research income ranking list and the bachelor’s degree ranking list was +0.10 in 2017, while in the three previous years it was +0.10, -0.05, and +0.12 respectively. If size of college were taken into account, the correlation between research income and number of degrees offered would likely be negative. For example, using Research Infosource Inc.’s estimate of the numbers of teaching faculty plus dedicated researchers in each college, the Spearman coefficient between the ranking by number of degrees and research income per staff member for 2017 is -0.65.

A possible explanation for the counterintuitive finding of a negative correlation between research income per faculty member and numbers of degree programs lies in the funding arrangements for college bachelor’s degree programs. Because the colleges funding formula provides little additional funding for degree programs, the more degree programs a college has, the more it must stretch its resources just to provide sufficient support for its degree programs, and the less it has to support research. Thus, colleges with more degree programs may be less able to support the development of research than colleges with fewer degree programs. The research funding situation is quite different in colleges than in universities, where support for research is built into the enrolment-based funding formula. While it is often alleged that research draws resources away from undergraduate teaching in the university sector; in the college sector, undergraduate teaching may require the use of resources that could otherwise be used to support research.

In comparison with the polytechnics elsewhere that have been discussed in this chapter, two characteristics of Ontario colleges are particularly noteworthy: the relatively low proportion of total college enrolment accounted for by degree programs and of total undergraduate enrolment accounted for by college degree programs. The next two sections address these features of the Ontario post-secondary system.

LEVELS OF APPLIED EDUCATION IN ONTARIO COLLEGES

It was suggested earlier that one of the core elements in the idea of a polytechnic is the provision of applied education at an advanced level. What the term advanced connotes might vary by context, but it should include the capability to award credible, high-quality bachelor’s degrees. In a study comparing quality assurance standards for degree programs of applied sector institutions in Canada and several foreign countries, the author found the Ontario standards for assessment of CBD programs to be the most comprehensive, detailed, and demanding of any jurisdiction—perhaps unnecessarily so (Skolnik, 2016a).

The advanced level of education provided by Ontario colleges is indicated not only by their bachelor’s degree programs, but also by their advanced diploma and graduate certificate programs. Ontario is one of only a few provinces in which colleges offer three-year programs to students who have previously completed 12 years of schooling. Post-secondary programs of three years’ duration that do not result in a degree are not found in the United States or Europe. On the other hand, three-year bachelor’s degrees are common in Europe. For example, three years is the dominant or a common length of a bachelor’s degree program in polytechnics in the Czech Republic, Belgium, Finland, Ireland, Norway, and Switzerland (Kyvik & Lepori, 2010).

Research done under the auspices of Colleges Ontario showed that many advanced diploma programs in the province’s colleges meet, or with small adjustments could meet, the Ontario Qualifications Framework standard for the bachelor’s degree (Colleges Ontario, 2012; Skolnik, 2013). The Ontario Graduate Certificate—which must meet the standard of a post-diploma certificate in the Ontario Qualifications Framework—requires a university degree or a college diploma for admission. Of students entering graduate certificate programs in Ontario colleges, 77.5% possess a university degree (Wheelahan et al., 2017). Such programs are a particular strength of Ontario colleges, offering over 70% of the graduate certificates offered by Canadian colleges and institutes (Colleges and Institutes Canada, 2017).

In 2015, enrolment in the most advanced programs the colleges offer—advanced diplomas, graduate certificates, and degrees—constituted 37.9% of total college enrolments in Ontario (Wheelahan et al., 2017). Degrees and graduate certificates were the fastest-growing program types, having increased by 236.5% and 187.6% respectively since 2006, compared to a total growth rate of enrolment in all programs of 43.3% (Wheelahan et at., 2017). Advanced level programs would almost certainly constitute an even higher percentage of enrolment for ITALs or Ontario members of Polytechnics Canada, because those institutions offer disproportionately more bachelor’s degree and graduate certificate programs than other colleges. According to Colleges and Institutes Canada (2017), the six colleges that offer the largest numbers of graduate certificates of any member institutions are all Ontario members of Polytechnics Canada.

However, the number of degree programs in Ontario colleges, even when combined with other advanced level programs, constitutes a smaller proportion of activity than tends to be the case for polytechnics in many European countries, which, as noted earlier, are often predominantly degree-granting institutions. In many European countries, as the former technical colleges evolved into predominantly degree-granting institutions, non-degree activity was shifted to a separate vocational education and training (VET) sector. In some cases, a consequence of this shifting pattern of activity was the near disappearance of two-year programs. For example, by 2011, the proportion of 25- to 34-year-olds in both Finland and the Netherlands whose highest level of education was similar to a Canadian college diploma was 2%, compared to 26% in Canada (OECD, 2013). The authors of a 2014 OECD review of vocational education in the Netherlands expressed concern that the results of this kind of shift might be to leave insufficient opportunities for graduates of secondary school vocational programs to continue their education, and to produce fewer graduates of short-cycle post-secondary vocational education than were needed by the economy (Fazekas & Litjens, 2014).

An important potential societal benefit of having post-secondary institutions that offer both degree programs and the kinds of programs that colleges have traditionally offered (i.e., diploma, certificate, trades, and adult upgrading) is that such institutions may be able to create better pathways to degrees from other types of programs than are commonly found between colleges and universities, as described in O’Neill et al. (2021; this volume). Such pathways could provide opportunities for educational and social mobility not only for students within the institution that offers both types of programs, but also from colleges that offer few or no degree programs to institutions offering many degree programs. With the development of such pathways, baccalaureate-granting colleges could become “receiving” institutions, admitting substantial numbers of transfer students from colleges that grant few or no bachelor’s degrees themselves.

The need for such pathways is suggested both by comparing the characteristics of college and university students, and by comparing the rates of baccalaureate degree attainment between students who start post-secondary education in a college and those who start in a university. More than half the students who enter post-secondary education in Ontario start in a college.² Compared to university students, college students are more likely to be from lower-income families; be of Indigenous background; have a physical, mental, or learning disability; live in a rural area; or be a first-generation post-secondary student (Colleges Ontario, 2015).

The average degree completion rate for undergraduate students in Ontario universities from 1996 to 2007 was about 77% (Ministry of Advanced Education and Skills Development, 2017b). There is no reason to expect that this rate would have decreased since 2007, and it may have increased.

Trick’s (2013) review of the literature on college-to-university transfer indicates that about 7.7% to 8.7% of graduates of Ontario colleges pursue a bachelor’s degree; most (but not all) do so via transfer to an Ontario university. Key Performance Indicator (KPI) data for Ontario colleges shows a provincial average graduation rate of 66.6% (Colleges Ontario, 2017). Coupling that graduation rate with an 8% transfer rate for graduates would mean that close to 5% of the students who enrol in a college would graduate and transfer to a university. In the United States, about 42% of students who transfer from a college to a university complete a bachelor’s degree (Jenkins & Fink, 2016). Because the post-secondary systems of many states were designed with transfer in mind, we might expect that the completion rate for transfer students in the United States would be higher than the rate for Ontario.

However, in a study of students who transferred from Seneca College to York University, it was found that 47% completed their degree while another 20% were still enrolled at the time of the study (Smith et al., 2016). It is likely that because of the proximity of these two institutions, and their history of collaboration, the degree completion rate of Seneca-York transfer students would be higher than the average for all transfer students in Ontario. All things considered, it would seem reasonable to estimate that the upper limit for an overall degree completion rate is about 50% for Ontario college graduates who transfer to university, though a more realistic rate might be lower than that. Assuming that 50% of those who transfer to university complete a degree, the resulting estimate of the bachelor’s degree attainment rate for students who start post-secondary education in an Ontario college would be about 2.5%, compared to a rate of 77% for those who start in a university.

One of the reasons students have a difficult time transferring from a college career program to a university is that the curricula of college career programs do not mesh well with most university programs (Baker et al., 2009). In part this is because college curricula are more practice-based while university undergraduate curricula are predominantly discipline-based (McArthur, 1997). The curricula of college bachelor’s programs are more likely than those of university bachelor’s programs to mesh well with the curricula of certificate and diploma programs, especially where the college degree program was constructed on the base of a diploma program.

Due to the preponderance of academically and socially disadvantaged students in colleges relative to universities, even a modest reduction in the difference in degree attainment between those who start post-secondary education in a college and those who start in a university could have important equity implications besides increasing the overall rate of baccalaureate degree attainment in Ontario. To make a significant dent in the disparity, it would be necessary to improve existing pathways from certificate and diploma programs to CBD programs. It would probably be necessary also to substantially increase the number and range of CBD programs to ensure greater capacity and affinity for accommodating graduates of certificate and diploma programs in CBD programs.

An example of the type of pathway that might be created is provided by Victoria University in Melbourne, Australia, which offers a “Guaranteed Diploma to Degree” to incoming diploma students. A student who completes a diploma with a satisfactory grade point average is offered admission into a related bachelor’s degree program without having to apply to the program, and in many fields students can complete a baccalaureate degree in the same length of time as if they had gone directly into the bachelor’s program (Victoria University, 2017).

This kind of arrangement was not possible when Ontario colleges first started offering bachelor’s degree programs, because at the time the regulations of the Postsecondary Education Quality Assessment Board (PEQAB) prevented such transfer arrangements. However, some college administrators who were interviewed in a recent study of the Ontario college bachelor’s degree felt that now there is greater flexibility in dealing with PEQAB requirements on such matters than was the case earlier (Wheelahan et al., 2017). For example, previously there were numerical restrictions on the amount of credit that could be awarded to students transferring from diploma programs, but those limits were removed a few years ago. However, it is not clear whether there is yet sufficient flexibility in the program approval process for colleges to offer, for example, two-plus-two arrangements for transfer from a two-year diploma program to a four-year bachelor’s degree program.³

SCALE OF BACHELOR’S DEGREE PROGRAMMING

Earlier it was noted that in several jurisdictions, polytechnics account for the majority of undergraduate enrolment, or at least between a fifth and half of enrolment. The contrast with Ontario, where colleges account for about 3.6% of undergraduate enrolment, is striking. The fact that college degrees constitute such a small proportion of undergraduate degrees in the province may be preventing them from achieving more widespread recognition as “normal” undergraduate degrees. In the Wheelahan et al. (2017) study, students expressed concerns about the lack of understanding of what a CBD was among their family and peers; administrators and faculty expressed concerns about the difficulty of gaining acceptance of the degrees from Ontario university graduate schools. Though the relative newness of the degree is probably a factor (Hurley & Sá, 2013), the small share of the degree market that college degrees comprise is likely a more significant contribution.

Wilkinson (1980) suggested that during the years when Ryerson Polytechnical Institute was the only non-university post-secondary institution in Ontario that awarded degrees, it faced difficulty explaining what its degree meant to prospective students, employers, and the public. In a related vein, Smith (1989) argued that when the number of degrees produced by a particular type of institution is relatively small, those degrees are “an easy target for ‘credentialism’-type discrimination” (p. 3). In the first decade of the present century, the fact that there was only a small number of non-university, degree-granting institutions in British Columbia (the university colleges) was said to be a major contributor to the problem of public understanding of their degrees (Plant, 2007).

Insofar as an explanation based on Smith’s observation is valid, the remedy would be to substantially increase the number of degrees offered and enrolment in college degree programs. It is difficult to say how great a proportion of undergraduate degrees colleges would have to offer for them to be regarded as a normal part of the undergraduate degree landscape in Ontario. Moodie (2009) addressed a similar question in an examination of dual sector institutions in Australia, those institutions that “have a substantial student load in both vocational education and higher education” (p. 59). He wanted to determine how high a proportion of total student load the activity of the smaller sector would have to constitute for it to be regarded as a normal rather than an exceptional activity of the institution. Moodie noted that there is a whole class of social questions of this type—for example, what is the threshold for the proportion of women in an occupation for women to be considered a normal part of the workforce for that occupation? Moodie suggested that the figure of 20% is often observed as the tipping point where the sought-after change occurs. In regard to the dual sector question, he argued that “when an institution’s load in the other sector reaches 20% then the institution reaches the point where it must institutionalise all the requirements for that sector, develop policies and practices to support that sector, and develop cultures that will sustain it” (Wheelahan et al., 2017, p. 68).

Wheelahan et al. (2017) found the concept of the tipping point useful in their study of the development of institutional processes for implementing and sustaining bachelor’s degree programs in colleges. They reported that the larger colleges in their study were moving toward the point where they could institutionalize and normalize the operation of bachelor’s degree programs,⁴ but that because of insufficient economies of scale, the smaller colleges were having difficulty allocating enough resources to develop the necessary institutional infrastructure and expertise. Thus, there may be two distinct arguments for expanding bachelor’s degree programming in the colleges. One is to reach a level that makes it economical for the institutions that offer such programs to develop the necessary institutional infrastructure. The other is to reach that point where the college bachelor’s degree is considered a normal educational credential in the province. It is important to note that the relevant quantitative index is different for these two arguments. In one case it refers to the percentage of an institution’s total enrolment that enrolment in its bachelor’s degree programs constitutes; in the other case, the relevant statistic is the percentage of total undergraduate enrolment in the province accounted for by enrolment in CBD programs.

The following estimate is illustrative of the relationship between these two indices. If enrolment in bachelor’s degree programs at the seven Ontario member colleges of Polytechnics Canada were increased to the point where it constituted 20% of enrolment in each college, the author’s rough estimate is that this would increase such enrolment in the college sector by about 106%. Enrolment in CBD programs would then constitute 7.4% of total undergraduate enrolment in the province.

A proposal to expand college baccalaureate-granting on the scale suggested here would be strengthened if it were possible to demonstrate that there was commensurate employer demand for graduates of such programs. Although arguments that there is increased need for polytechnic education in Ontario date back more than two decades (e.g., Smith, 1989), it has not been possible to measure employer demand (or societal need) for graduates of polytechnic programs like those of Ontario colleges. In large part, this is because the college bachelor’s degree has not been a distinct category of educational attainment in most existing data-gathering and analysis systems. For example, this category of education does not appear in the Canadian Occupational Projection System, the major source of projections of the demand and supply for workers with different levels and types of education in Canada (Government of Canada, 2017). Nevertheless, in the few surveys of employers that have been conducted, respondents found that the new degrees fill a need, and the practical orientation of graduates is attractive to employers (Malatest & Associates, 2010; Navigator, 2013).

It has also been difficult to obtain information on labour market outcomes for graduates of CBD programs because that credential has not been included as a distinct category in most surveys of graduates. The Ontario college KPI surveys provide some information, but the university sector uses mostly different KPIs than the college sector. The lack of coordination or commonalities between the data-gathering efforts of the two sectors severely limits the capability for comparison of outcomes between graduates of university and CBD programs.

Statistics Canada has recently produced a study comparing the earnings of bachelor’s degree graduates of colleges and universities (Frenette, 2019). Drawing upon data from the Postsecondary Student Information System and the T1 Family File of Canadian tax filers, the study compares the earnings of graduates from 2010 to 2013 two years after graduation. The analysis is based on aggregated data for British Columbia, Alberta, and Ontario combined, and Ontario graduates constitute 30% of the total. The Statistics Canada study showed that CBD graduates were earning on average about 12% more than university bachelor’s degree (UBD) graduates two years after graduation. Most of the variance in overall average earnings could be explained by differences in the fields of the graduates. CBD graduates were more concentrated in higher-earning fields such as business, management, public administration, and health. Some of the variance between the two groups was also associated with age differences. CBD graduates were on average two years older than UBD graduates. The study also showed that the earnings of UBD graduates increased faster than that of CBD graduates between two and five years after graduation, and that UBD graduates were more likely to enroll in graduate school than CBD graduates.

While use of the term polytechnic in institutional names may, as noted earlier, be in decline, demand for the substance of polytechnic education is clearly on the ascendancy. College bachelor’s degree programs are likely to enjoy considerable demand from prospective students and employers as a consequence of their embodiment of the characteristics of polytechnic education. There are two characteristics of CBD programs that appear to be especially in demand presently. One is their emphasis on equipping graduates with job-ready knowledge and skills for particular roles in the workforce, enabling them to capitalize on a recent trend in this direction in higher education (Fisher et al., 2009). The other is their strength in integrating theory and practical experience. Post-secondary programs that integrate learning with work “have been hailed as significantly improving students’ employment prospects and labour market outcomes, as well as offering a range of additional benefits to students and employers” (Sattler & Peters, 2013, p. 13). Although work-integrated learning is a core feature of CBD programs, it is less common in university programs, where students may experience “difficulty relating classroom theories to the workplace” (Sattler & Peters, 2013, p. 10).

Despite their apparent value-add, there might be two arguments against trying to expand bachelor’s degree programming in the college sector to the point where the colleges account for as much as 20% of total undergraduate enrolment. First, it may not be necessary to expand that far for college degrees to gain acceptance as a normal type of degree. The 235.6% increase in enrolment in college degree programs from 2006 to 2015 suggests that attracting students has not been a major problem. Given the obstacles to getting new degree programs approved and started, it is possible that the major constraints on growth are on the supply side rather than the demand side. Moreover, in spite of the concerns of students, faculty, and administrators noted earlier, Hurley & Sá (2013) concluded that already by 2010, college degrees had “obtained enough legitimacy to survive” (p. 174). Nevertheless, a significant expansion may be necessary to ensure that the college degree is not in jeopardy of the credentialism-type discrimination Smith (1989) warned of—particularly in regard to admission to postgraduate programs in universities.

The second possible argument against expanding the scale of the college bachelor’s degree in Ontario to a level comparable to that of some of the jurisdictions referred to in this chapter is that the development of higher education has followed a different path in Ontario than in those countries. In many European countries, a decision was made early on that colleges would be given a substantial share of the responsibility for baccalaureate-level education, and this is reflected in the table on the relative scale of the polytechnic and university sectors in different countries shown earlier. In those countries, the number of polytechnics exceeds the number of universities by anywhere from 40% to over 200%.

In contrast, Ontario has already invested heavily in creating a university sector of relatively larger scale. The province has almost as many universities as colleges, and the disparity between Ontario and the countries shown in Table 1 in the balance of different types of institutions would be even greater if we concentrated only on the colleges that are the main providers of bachelor’s degree programs, e.g., the Ontario members of Polytechnics Canada. For example, with about 82% of the population of the Netherlands, Ontario would have fewer than one-sixth the number of Netherlands polytechnics, but over 50% more universities. The “sunk capital” argument suggests it is too late for Ontario to strive for a Netherlands or Finland scale for college bachelor’s degrees, but it may not be too late to strive for the more modest New Zealand scale of about 20%.

Earlier we reflected on the possible role of Ontario’s colleges in the provision of advanced vocationally oriented education from the perspective of international comparisons of post-secondary enrolment patterns. We could also look at the issue from the perspective of international comparisons of educational attainment. One of the features that stands out in comparisons of educational attainment between Canada and other OECD countries is that Canada exceeds all the others in the proportion of the population whose highest academic credential is a diploma, but it ranks lower than many OECD countries with respect to attainment of bachelor’s and master’s degrees. The pattern is similar for Ontario, though its rankings in bachelor’s and master’s degree attainment are proportionally higher than those of Canada overall. In 2014, Ontario’s rate of diploma attainment was 28%, compared to an OECD average of 8% (OECD, 2015; Statistics Canada, 2015). In contrast, when compared to the 34 OECD countries, Ontario is tied for ninth and 10th in bachelor’s degree attainment, and tied for 16th through 20th in master’s degree attainment.

Giving colleges a greater role in the production of bachelor’s degrees could help Ontario increase its rate of bachelor’s degree attainment. For example, expanding bachelor’s degree programs to the point where they constituted 20% of undergraduate enrolment would bring Ontario to about par with New Zealand with respect to this index. The proportion of the population aged 25 to 64 that has a bachelor’s degree is nearly a quarter higher in New Zealand than in Ontario (OECD, 2015). In countries as diverse as New Zealand, Ireland, Finland, and the Netherlands, students have enrolled in large numbers in the bachelor’s degree programs of vocationally oriented institutions, and employers have hired graduates of these programs in large numbers. There is no reason the same could not be expected in Ontario if colleges were enabled to expand their degree programs offerings. Also, substantially improving the opportunities for college diploma students to complete CBD programs could reduce the proportion of the Ontario population whose highest academic credential is a diploma and increase the proportion whose highest credential is a bachelor’s degree (or postgraduate degree)—particularly if the option of 2+2 laddering expands within CBD programs. Moreover, enabling colleges to assume a much larger share of undergraduate enrolment would enable universities to direct more resources to postgraduate programs and research.

SOME NEEDED REFORMS

Unlike colleges in most American states and a few Canadian provinces, for most of their history Ontario colleges had no connection with universities, and unlike colleges in many of the jurisdictions where there was a similar separation of colleges from universities, Ontario colleges were not given the role of constituting a parallel post-secondary sector that offered vocationally oriented degree programs.

Gradually during the past two decades, through a combination of their own agency and often grudging support or acquiescence of government, colleges have obtained a modicum of both licence to perform as polytechnics and connection with universities. Of the two prongs of reform, both progress and potential seem greater for the polytechnic path than for the university-connection path, though the two paths are not mutually exclusive. After years of slogging away, only a very small percentage of the many students who start post-secondary education in a college are able to attain a bachelor’s degree at a university. Meanwhile, the opportunities for university-bound students to take advantage of what colleges have to offer are far superior to the opportunities college-bound students find at universities (Skolnik, 2017). On the other hand, in spite of the difficulties that colleges face in mounting bachelor’s degree programs, enrolment in college degree programs has been growing at an average annual rate slightly in excess of 25%. Moreover, while dissatisfaction with college-to-university transfer arrangements is endemic in the United States (Pusser & Levin, 2009), good polytechnic models abound in Europe.

Expanding the polytechnic role of colleges would likely be the most effective way to improve pathways to the bachelor’s degree for students in diploma programs. CBD programs generally have more affinity with college diploma programs than do UBD programs, and colleges are in a better position than universities to assess the curriculum fit between diploma and degree programs, and to make adjustments in both curricula to improve the fit. For an example, see O’Neill et al., (2021; this volume). College diploma programs enroll a considerably higher proportion of economically and academically disadvantaged students than do universities. Creating pathways from the diploma to the college bachelor’s degree would thus likely contribute to greater social equity in baccalaureate degree attainment (Skolnik et al., 2018).

If Ontario’s colleges were given the role that polytechnic institutions have in some countries and were allowed to substantially increase bachelor’s degree activity, recent patterns suggest that the bulk of the expansion might be done by the four to seven colleges that have indicated the interest and capacity to do so through the numbers of programs they have initiated, and their having obtained ITAL status and/or membership in Polytechnics Canada. While it is possible that, with encouragement and support of government for an expansion of bachelor’s degree activity, a few other colleges might choose to grow their bachelor’s degrees, the bulk of bachelor’s degrees is likely to be provided by only a portion—and probably a relatively small proportion—of the colleges.

Ideally, expansion of bachelor’s degree programming in the colleges that choose to or are designated to do so should be done in such a way that every school or faculty in each institution offers a range of diplomas and degrees, and all of the diploma programs are laddered into degree programs. Diversity of fields of study is one of the great strengths of the colleges, and it is important that this diversity extends to the realm of college degrees to meet the needs of the economy and of a diverse body of students. This would further ensure that there are adequate pathways from other credentials. Getting matches between degrees and other credentials is likely a problem at present, with 1,172 certificate programs, 2,192 diploma programs, and 840 advanced diploma programs (OCAS, 2017), but only 108 degree programs. In addition, ideally provision should be made for many faculty members to be engaged in research in a way that would benefit students, though the primary emphasis of the institutions should still be on teaching.

Among the reforms that would be particularly helpful for enabling colleges to substantially expand enrolment in college bachelor’s degrees are those pertaining to finance, regulation, and program approval. One such reform would be to recognize that colleges incur additional costs in offering bachelor’s degree programs beyond those of certificate and diploma programs. Moreover, since CBD programs are in technical/professional fields that necessitate smaller classes and more supervision than arts and sciences programs, college degree programs may be at least as costly as UBD programs. Yet the college funding formula provides little additional funding for degree programs. Earlier it was noted that the arrangements for funding college degree programs may slow the development of the complementary applied research that could enhance both the student learning experience and professional development for faculty.

Inherent in all of this is the fact that colleges are currently limited in the number of degree programs that they are allowed to offer. Though perhaps a pressing matter right now for only a few colleges, the barriers that these limitations present need to be raised. There is no reason to believe that increasing the scale of its bachelor’s degree programming would jeopardize the viability of its other programs.

A final important area of reform involves the program approval process. In particular, there is a need to expedite the review process for new bachelor’s degree proposals for colleges with a proven track record of offering such programs. Indeed, expedited review processes are a common element of quality assurance processes for degree programs of universities and colleges in other jurisdictions (Skolnik, 2016a).

SYSTEM REDESIGN AND NOMENCLATURE ISSUES

Some questions that might arise in conjunction with the direction of development suggested here are whether the institutions that would provide the bulk of the expansion of bachelor’s degree programming should be formally named or designated as polytechnics, how many such institutions there should be, and whether they should be organized into a third sector of post-secondary education in Ontario.

While the scale of their bachelor’s degree programming may be too small to fit the idea of a polytechnic in Europe, Ontario colleges do fit a view of polytechnics as vocationally oriented post-secondary institutions that offer an alternative to traditional universities. Earlier it was noted that besides offering a modest number of bachelor’s degree programs, colleges also offer large numbers of advanced diploma programs of three years’ duration, and graduate certificate programs of which more than three-quarters of enrollees are university graduates. In addition, they collaborate with universities in about a hundred bachelor’s degree programs in which students who are registered in universities get credit toward their degrees for courses provided by colleges (OCAS, 2017). Further, in regard to student movement between colleges and universities, colleges fit the pattern of a separate, parallel post-secondary sector rather than that of a set of subordinate feeder institutions. In the latest year for which such data were available, 2007–08, the number of students with university experience who were attending a college greatly exceeded the number with college experience attending a university, and the majority of the former already had a university degree (Colleges Ontario, 2009).⁵

Having a plausible claim to the polytechnic designation does not necessarily mean an institution should use the term in its name. It was noted earlier that the term is not widely used in institutional names elsewhere, and several institutions in other jurisdictions that once used the term polytechnic in their names—including SAIT in Alberta—have ceased to do so. Nor has British Columbia Institute of Technology (BCIT) opted to use the term polytechnic in its name, even though it is formally designated as a polytechnic institution in the Colleges and Institute Act (British Columbia, 2019). BCIT offers substantially more bachelor’s degrees than any Ontario college, and it also offers master’s degrees.

However, it could be argued that BCIT’s situation is different than that of such colleges as Humber, Seneca, Sheridan, or Conestoga, because BCIT has been highly differentiated from the colleges in its province since the time of its founding, as have SAIT and NAIT in Alberta. Because these three institutions have operated as special-mandate institutions for more than five decades, their branding has been well established. On the other hand, some modification of an institution’s name may be important in conveying a major change in its mission, such as becoming a substantial provider of bachelor’s degrees, with all that is entailed by that change. The problem is that there aren’t many good options for such a change in institutional name. Judging by its limited take-up and inconsistent use, Institute of Technology and Advanced Learning hasn’t done the job.

In the United States, community colleges that have become substantial providers of applied bachelor’s degrees have tended to drop the word community from their name (Floyd & Skolnik, 2019). However, that approach is not helpful for Ontario colleges, since the term college has different connotations in Canada than in the US.

As noted earlier, in Europe the popular name for post-secondary institutions that provide an applied learning alternative to universities is Universities of Applied Sciences (UAS). While adoption of this term for some Ontario colleges might help people outside North America understand what these institutions do, that name might not be understood in Canada. Moreover, since the term sciences is not used as broadly in Canada as in Europe in referring to educational programs, UAS might not be deemed by some to capture the full range of programs offered by Ontario colleges. Still, in view of its increasing prominence internationally, some consideration might be given to adoption of this name.

While, as noted earlier, the tendency in several countries has been to use the terms polytechnic or university of applied sciences for whole sectors, in Ontario, consideration of the term polytechnic has been associated with the idea of institutional differentiation. In 2013, the Ontario government formally adopted the goal of increased differentiation within the post-secondary system (Ministry of Training, Colleges and Universities, 2013), but the specifics of how greater differentiation is to be manifested are yet to be determined. A panel of experts that was asked to look into this question suggested the government should consider “a more realistic sorting of institutions into categories than that permitted by the simple college-university classification that now exists” (Higher Education Quality Council of Ontario, 2013, p. 13).

Grouping a set of colleges into a polytechnic sector—however the sector were to be named—could be one way of achieving this new system of categorization. Determining which institutions were to be members of such a sector at least partially on the basis of the numbers of baccalaureate programs they offer would build on the finding of a 2013 study by the Higher Education Quality Council of Ontario that degree granting is “the most important distinguishing feature in contemplating formal differentiation between colleges” (Hicks et al., 2013, p. 3). It would also represent a movement away from the “strong college-university dichotomy that now exists in Ontario” (Hicks et al., 2013, p. 4) and toward the more differentiated types of systems that exist in Alberta and British Columbia. In addition to furthering the development of polytechnic education, such a reform would give Ontario something that both Alberta and British Columbia have, and which some have advocated for Ontario: the capability of having a substantially greater proportion of undergraduates educated in institutions whose primary function is teaching.

Formally designating some colleges as polytechnics would require specific criteria. Although the number of baccalaureate programs would be a logical criterion, there is some question as to whether that alone should be sufficient. Other possible criteria related to educational programming might be the breadth of fields in which degree programs are offered and whether the institution can meet the provincial standards for offering master’s programs in applied fields of study. While some indicator of research performance might be an appropriate criterion for polytechnic designation, more study of variation in research performance among colleges and of the correlation between research performance and degree activity would be necessary before such a criterion could be established.

It should be noted that there might be possible downsides to creating a third sector of post-secondary education in Ontario. Although this reform could give recognition to differences in interests between (mostly larger) colleges that are heavily invested in baccalaureate granting and other (mostly smaller) colleges that are not, it would replace a single grouping of institutions by two smaller groupings, each of which—because of their size—would likely have less political clout than the present larger association. In addition, the separation from the larger colleges may leave the remaining colleges with a weaker financial base for providing such services as institutional research, policy development, and public relations. The partitioning could also adversely affect the public image of the remaining colleges in the manner suggested by the earlier quotation from Crosland (1965).

Another concern is that the experience of other jurisdictions suggests that third-sector groupings of institutions may not be durable. In a society and a post-secondary culture that are so inured to a binary distinction between institutions, there may be both internal and external pressures of a destabilizing nature, particularly if some institutions view obtaining polytechnic status as a step on the path to gaining university status.

An alternative to partitioning the colleges into two sectors would be formal recognition and support of the polytechnics as a bona fide interest group within the college sector. While members of this group would continue to share many interests with all the other colleges, they would also have their own common interests, such as raising the limit on the number of bachelor’s degrees a college may award and expediting the program review process for colleges that offer more than a certain number of degree programs.

CONCLUDING COMMENTS

Issues concerning their formal name and organizational relationships should not be allowed to divert the focus from the benefits of enabling a number of Ontario colleges to play a more substantial role as providers of bachelor’s degrees. Moving in this direction could bring greater equity to Ontario’s higher education system, increase the province’s baccalaureate attainment rate, and serve the needs of the economy. The same arguments support extending the role of these institutions to the awarding of applied master’s degrees, as is the case for BCIT and universities of applied sciences in other countries.

An expansion of the degree-granting role would include taking the actions necessary for these institutions to ladder their diploma and degree programs so that a student who meets the admission requirements for a diploma program could have the opportunity to complete both a diploma and a four-year bachelor’s degree in four years. It is also important that the same kinds of pathways from diploma to degree programs that are created within baccalaureate-granting colleges are available also to diploma students in other colleges, to improve their opportunities to attain a bachelor’s degree in the field of their diploma studies, or a closely related field.

Perhaps the best starting point for the changes suggested in this chapter would be for the government to embrace the goal of increasing the proportion of undergraduate students in Ontario who are educated in institutions in which teaching is the primary—though not the exclusive—mission. A group of college-sector institutions that emphasize applied learning at an advanced level on a strong theoretical foundation could make an important contribution to the achievement of this goal—regardless of what they are called.

Thanks are owed to David Trick, Gavin Moodie, and Bill Summers for helpful comments on earlier drafts of this chapter.

Endnotes

^{1 The author is indebted to Gavin Moodie for this suggestion.}

^{2 The fall term headcount figures from the Ministry of Advanced Education and Skills Development for 2015-16 showed that 54.2% of first-year students were in the colleges (Ministry of Advanced Education and Skills Development, 2017a; 2017c). The Colleges Ontario 2017 Environmental Scan (Colleges Ontario, 2017) indicated that 58% of new full-time post-secondary entrants in 2016 enrolled in a college and 42% in a university, but the college figure included apprenticeship students.}

^{3 Wheelahan et al. (2017) provide more detailed analysis of the issues related to transfer from college diploma to college degree programs.}

^{4 In two of the larger colleges, the number of degree students reached 16.8% and 18.9%, respectively, of the total number of students in 2013–14 (Wheelahan et al., 2017).}

^{5 From the tables and charts in the cited publication, the author was able to determine that in 2007–08, 9,627 students with university experience were attending a college, compared to 5,630 with college experience attending a university. Of the former university students attending a college, 4,958 possessed a university degree, not a great many fewer than the total number of former college students who were attending a university.}

References