Global Development

Origins and Varieties of Provincial College Systems

The origins of community colleges in Canada lie in two distinct historical periods of quite different length and specificity. The first was the period prior to the 1960s when a variety of types of non-university postsecondary institutions came into existence and developed through what Campbell called “a process of quiet evolution” (Campbell, 1971, p. 3). The second period was largely between the early 1960s and the early 1970s when most provinces created systems of community colleges with precise mandates and comprehensive arrangements for funding, governance, and programming.

It is unclear just when the first period actually started. D. McCormack Smyth, who was a member of the inaugural governing board of a college that was opened at the beginning of the second period, traces the origins of Ontario’s community colleges back to the Mechanics Institutes that were first established in 1830 (Smyth, 1970, pp. 3-4). In the first book on Canadian community colleges, Campbell identified Victoria College in British Columbia as the first junior college in Canada. Under an affiliation with McGill University in Montreal, about 4,000 kilometers away, Victoria College began offering lower division Arts and Science courses in 1903. The College continued as a junior college subsequently changing its affiliation from McGill University to the University of British Columbia, and in 1962 it became the independent University of Victoria. As of 1958-59, the national statistics agency in Canada reported that there were 49 junior colleges, over half of which were in Quebec, forty of which were under the control of churches, and only two of which used the term, junior college, in their titles (cited in Campbell, p. 5). One of the two was Lethbridge Junior College in Alberta, which was established in 1957. In their authoritative 1986 book on Canada’s community colleges, Dennison and Gallagher named Lethbridge Junior College as Canada’s first community college, though they said that a case could also be made for Lakehead College of Arts, Science and Technology in Ontario, which was formed in 1956 from a predecessor institution, Lakehead Technical Institute, which had started in 1948. (Dennison and Gallagher, 1986, p. 301).

Whereas in the first period the impetus for the establishment of an individual community college type institution came from a municipality, church, or other group of interested persons, in the second period it was provincial governments that provided not only the will but also the direction and design for emerging systems of community colleges. In most cases, the blueprint for these new provincial systems of colleges came from a royal commission or other type of comprehensive study of provincial needs and resources. For example, in British Columbia, the influential study was a report prepared by the President of the University of British Columbia, John B. Macdonald, which recommended the establishment of six community colleges in the context of a broader plan to address the postsecondary educational needs of the Province (Macdonald, 1962). In Quebec, a royal commission on Education, headed by Alphonse-Marie Parent, recommended a new system of colleges as part of a major overhaul of the entire educational system (Royal Commission of Inquiry, 1963-1966). Between 1963 and 1973, six provinces enacted legislation pertaining to the establishment, funding, and operation of new systems of community colleges.

Although there were differences in the timing and nature of the new college systems among the provinces, Dennison and Gallagher identified some common factors that contributed significantly to these developments. The first and most urgent was the projected increase in the number of secondary school leavers. Even if the postsecondary participation rate did not continue to increase, postsecondary education systems would have had to expand substantially in order to accommodate the increased numbers in the relevant age group. Enrolment in college and university programs in Canada was 120,000 in 1960, but was projected to increase to 250,000 by 1967 and to over 350,000 by 1970 (Dennison and Gallagher, 1986, p. 12).

Although plans were being made to increase the capacity of the university sector, there was a consensus that some other kinds of postsecondary institutions should be created to handle a substantial portion of the expected increase in postsecondary enrolment. One reason for this was that as a result of changes in technology, there was thought to be a great need for workers who were trained at a level that was intermediate between high school and university. For example, some industry leaders were arguing that the optimal ratio of engineering technicians and technologists to engineers was 3:1, whereas the actual ratio in Canada in the 1960s was 1:3 (Skolnik, 1970, pp. 287-288).

Another concern was that while more individuals needed some postsecondary education than in the past in order to cope with the increased complexity of the modern economy, many of these individuals neither needed nor were adequately prepared for a university education. Tied in with the latter concern was the mater of finding the resources for an unprecedented expansion of postsecondary education. As an historian of the development of postsecondary education in Ontario observed in a comment that would fit other provinces also, "It was clear that the province could bankrupt itself in a vain attempt to provide the most expensive of post-secondary facilities [i.e., universities] to all comers, regardless of evidence of ability to benefit from them” (Fleming, 1971, p. 492). A yet additional factor identified by Dennison and Gallagher was the strong influence of human capital theory on government and public opinion. A number of studies were appearing that showed the high returns that society could expect from increased investment in higher education, including one that attributed about a third of the 25 per cent income per capita gap between the United States and Canada to the fact that the postsecondary participation rate in Canada was substantially below that of the United States (Skolnik, 2005a, pp. 108-109).

Being largely creations of provincial governments, these systems varied according to the different ways that the provincial governments of the time perceived their respective economic, social, cultural – and political – needs. In a later publication, Gallagher and Dennison nicely categorized the different college systems into five models (Gallagher and Dennison, 1995). The first was that of the most and least populated provinces, Ontario and Prince Edward Island. The colleges there were intended to be quite distinct and separate from the universities. Their role was mainly to serve young people who were not eligible for university admission; their mission was to provide terminal vocational education to prepare these youth for the workforce. In introducing the legislation for the colleges in Ontario, the Minister of Education explicitly rejected the idea of the colleges offering what he called “university-parallel courses”, though he indicated that this function might be considered for the colleges in the future should circumstances change (Davis, 1966, p. 14). In order to emphasize that the colleges were not intended to be like American community colleges in that respect, the Government deliberately avoided the term “community college,” calling them instead Colleges of Applied Arts and Technology – though they soon came to called community colleges anyway.

The second model, which of Alberta and British Columbia, was for comprehensive community colleges, modeled on those in California, which combined university transfer programs with technical-vocational programs. A difference between those two provinces was that in British Columbia the community colleges also provided second-chance opportunities for adults while in Alberta, "most second-chance students were still directed to government-run vocational centers established throughout the province" (Gallagher and Dennison, 1995, p. 385).

The third model was one adopted in Manitoba, New Brunswick, Newfoundland, and the Yukon and Northwest Territories. Like Ontario and Prince Edward Island, these provinces and territories opted for a postsecondary vocational-technical college that did not have a university transfer function. However, these colleges differed from those in Ontario and Prince Edward Island in having a much stronger emphasis on shorter term work-entry training programs than on more advanced technological education. Later, Newfoundland incorporated a more limited form of university-transfer than British Columbia and Alberta had into the mandate of its colleges.

The fourth and fifth models were unique to Saskatchewan and Quebec respectively. The Saskatchewan model was characterized by a combination of colleges without walls in the rural areas and technical institutes in the urban areas. The former operated as brokers rather than as service providers, with the responsibility to arrange for provision of educational services by other institutions and community agencies. This function was intended to meet the adult education and community development needs of a populace that was widely dispersed in small communities that were experiencing declining population. This part of the model was, as Dennison and Gallagher explain, "effectively set aside in the late 1980s when four previously independent technical institutes were reconstituted as a new multi-campus Saskatchewan Institute of Applied Science and Technology and the more rural community colleges began to provide, as well as broker, educational services" (Gallagher and Dennison, 1995, pp. 385-386). Perhaps the most distinctive model was Quebec's in which a system of colleges of general and vocational education (CEGEPs) that borrowed from European experience was established. Situated after Grade 11, these colleges had two streams: a university preparation stream of two years which was a requirement for a Quebec student intending to go to a Quebec university; and a career preparation stream of three years. The Quebec colleges were not originally intended to place much emphasis on adult education or short term vocational training, but most soon became active adult education centers anyway. Because it starts after Grade 11, and is compulsory for students going on to university, the two year stream in the Quebec colleges is normally referred to as a university preparation rather than a university transfer stream.

The remaining province, Nova Scotia, did not create a system of community colleges during the period when all the other provinces were doing so. At the time, Nova Scotia had the largest number of universities per capita of any province, and 70 per cent of the population lived within 50 kilometers of a university. The province also had two institutes of technology, a land survey institute, an agricultural college that offered both university level and vocational courses and a junior college campus of one of the provincial universities. While it was not until later that the Government saw benefit in combining some of these institutions into a comprehensive community college, it made an innovative merger between two them in 1974. In that year, the junior college campus of St. Francis Xavier University was merged with the Nova Scotia Eastern Institute of Technology to create University College Cape Breton, an institution that combines the mission of a university and the mission of a community college. This institution changed its name to Cape Breton University in February, 2005, but it continues to offer both university programs and programs associated with a community college. Nova Scotia Community College, a multi-campus institution with 19 campuses in 14 communities was created in 1988.

Data on Numbers of Institutions and Enrolment

Determining the number of community colleges in Canada is not as straightforward a matter as one might assume. At the root of this problem is the ambiguity as to what a community college is. Campbell defined a community college as “a non-degree granting public or private institution offering vocational or university parallel studies, or both, in programs of one, two, or three years’ duration” (Campbell, 1971, p. 7). However, Campbell excluded for-profit institutions as well as many institutions whose programs were predominantly in the form of short-term vocational training for adults. Rather than offering a dictionary type definition of the community college, Dennison and Gallagher listed ten characteristics which taken together could be seen as distinguishing community colleges from other educational institutions in Canada: curriculum comprehensiveness; student heterogeneity; open admissions; substantial provision of student services; operational flexibility; decentralization of institutional facilities; responsiveness to government; emphasis on teaching and learning; community orientation; and their essential public character (Dennison and Gallagher, 1986, pp. 69-80).

In practice there are two sources of information for determining the number of community colleges in Canada. One is the membership list of the Association of Canadian Community Colleges (ACCC), a national agency whose activities include networking, lobbying, providing information and education pertaining to community colleges, facilitating exchanges with other countries, and providing direct services for member institutions. As of October, 2005, the ACCC listed 142 member institutions on its web site (www.accc.ca). In contrast, Statistics Canada’s registry of community colleges included 204 institutions (Orton, 2003, p. 7). One difference between the lists is that Statistics Canada includes many small institutions that have a limited vocational education mandate, for example radiation therapy training units in hospitals. Another difference is in regard to the treatment of multi-campus institutions. For example, in New Brunswick, formally there is a singe institution, New Brunswick Community College which is operated directly by the provincial Department of Training and Employment Development and has eleven campuses. In 2003, all eleven campuses were listed as members in the ACCC directory, but in 2005, only two members were listed, the main centers for administration of anglophone and francophone programming respectively. Having gone over these lists with the Dennison-Gallagher characteristics of community colleges in mind, my conclusion is that a stringent estimate of the number of community colleges in Canada would be about 125, while a broader definition could take the number to about 150 (Skolnik, 2004).

While the enrolment data provided by Statistics Canada are based upon a broader definition, most of the institutions that might be excluded under a more stringent definition are quite small. Thus, the Statistics Canada figures provide a reasonably good estimate of enrolment in community colleges in Canada. However, Statistics Canada has been in the process of revising its approach to postsecondary enrolment data, so the latest comprehensive data available are for 1999-2000. In that year, college enrolment was 408,781 full-time and 85,396 part-time, for a total of 494,177 (derived from Statistics Canada, 2003, pp. 348-349). While part-time enrolment constituted 17.3% of the total for Canada, for one province, British Columbia, part-time enrolment was especially prominent, comprising 54.9% of the total. Community colleges accounted for about 37 per cent of total postsecondary enrolment for Canada as a whole, and over 50 per cent in British Columbia, and over 40 per cent in Quebec. It should be noted that the college enrolment figures presented here are for only those college programs that are considered to be of a “postsecondary” nature, that is, programs of at least one year’s duration which may require completion of secondary school for admission. The ACCC has estimated that the total number of persons served annually by Canada’s colleges in all their programs – which include general adult education courses, apprenticeship, literacy, contract training for industry, and so on – is about 2.5 million (Brown, 2002, p. 3).

Characteristics and Recent Emphases

Earlier I noted what Dennison and Gallagher described as the ten core characteristics of community colleges in Canada. Here I would like to elaborate on a few of these characteristics and indicate some significant shifts of emphasis in relation to them. One of the most fundamental characteristics of Canada’s community colleges is curriculum comprehensiveness. In terms of subject matter, program structure and duration, method and format of instruction, location and scheduling, and target clientele, the range is enormous but nevertheless continually increasing. Frequently internal and external observers of the colleges express wonder at their ability to manage such a bewildering variety of activities that take place on a daily basis, but colleges appear to thrive on diversity and change. However, given the great range of actual and potential areas and types of college activity, and the fact that funding always seems to be inadequate relative to the number of persons that the colleges could usefully serve, it is no easy matter to decide which activities to expand or strengthen, and as a consequence, which not to expand or strengthen.

As colleges were established to serve as instruments of provincial policy, such decisions are influenced considerably by their provincial masters. Often direction comes in the form of regulations and policy guidelines reflecting a level of intrusiveness and detail that provincial governments would rarely if ever apply to their university systems. However, provincial governments have found that too much explicit direction can have a stultifying effect, and instead have been encouraging colleges to behave in a more entrepreneurial manner consistent with broad provincial social and economic goals, and subject to oversight by the appropriate government ministry. Such an approach of granting more latitude to college governing boards, subject to provincial oversight and with explicit provision for the government to limit the powers of local boards should it chose to do so, was in evidence in the 2002 Ontario Colleges of Applied Arts and Technology Act which replaced the earlier legislation pertaining to the colleges in that province. Increasingly, provincial oversight of the colleges has come to include the annual production of ever more sophisticated performance indicators and in some provinces the use of performance funding for the colleges. In keeping with the original idea that the colleges should be able to respond quickly and flexibly to demands of provincial governments, and also the more recent emphasis on colleges responding similarly to the dictates of the market, participatory decision-making structures of the kind associated with the university have largely been excluded from the design of the colleges. An exception was when significant elements of shared governance were introduced into British Columbia colleges in legislative amendments in 1991. While some tepid moves toward giving faculty more voice in colleges’ academic decisions in a few other provinces have occurred, the fact that university governance structures have been under some criticism in Canada for allegedly impeding the ability of universities to behave more entrepreneurially makes it unlikely that colleges will emulate universities in this regard in the foreseeable future.

The factor that has had the greatest influence in shaping the colleges in the past decade or so undoubtedly is globalization. Within the new global economy the enterprises for which the colleges have traditionally provided graduates of two or three year occupational education programs have come under greater competitive pressure to be innovative and efficient. In turn, government has raised its expectations for educational institutions to provide the kinds of services that will make local economies more globally competitive, and these institutions have seen themselves more and more as operating within an international environment subject to global competition in their provision of various educational activities. Being expected to serve as engines of economic growth is nothing new for Canada’s colleges: since their founding, this has been one of the most important elements in the missions of colleges in all provinces and the single dominant element of college missions in several provinces. However, globalization has led all provincial governments to intensify their expectations for and pressure on the economic service function of colleges, and it has stimulated major expansions of certain types of economic services provided by the colleges.

One such type of service is contract training for industry. As Ray Ivany, President of Nova Scotia Community College, notes, the vast majority of Canadian colleges engage in the provision of customized training for particular enterprises and industries, and after work force preparation, this activity “ranks as the second most important role for colleges in economic development” (Ivany, 2004, p. 6). According to Gerry Brown, President of the Association of Canadian Community Colleges, contract training with industry now typically accounts for 20 to 30 per cent of a college’s revenue (Gadd, 2005, p. E4). Examples include the petroleum industry in Alberta paying Keyano College in Fort McMurray to train workers in extraction technology for the oil sands; and the east coast shipping industry paying to have pilots trained in a two million dollar ship’s bridge simulator at the School of Maritime Studies in St. John’s, Newfoundland. Sometimes the services that colleges provide for industry and government clients go beyond training to include the design and development of programming and infrastructure, and sometimes the clients are overseas, as in the case of an $800 million contract that Newfoundland’s College of the North Atlantic won in 2000 in regard to the establishment of a new college for the Government of Qatar.

In many cases, contract training is provided in the context of a broader partnership between colleges and industry which involve other activities of mutual benefit to both parties including professional development opportunities for college faculty, as for example, in the partnerships that some colleges, like Niagara College in Ontario, have with the automobile manufacturing industry. Often industry contributes funds that enable a college to obtain the state-of-the-art technology that it needs. For example, Sheridan College in Ontario was able to build a new 18,000 square-foot Centre for Advanced Manufacturing and Design Technologies with the combined financial assistance of the provincial government, the city of Brampton, and local industry.  This new centre, announced in October, 2005, will train students and workers in the latest design and manufacturing technologies and, according to the mayor, help both to address the shortage of skilled labor in Ontario and make Ontario industry more globally competitive.

Another college activity that can produce significant economic benefits and which has expanded substantially in recent years is that of applied research. In many areas where colleges offer programs that are on the frontier of knowledge and technique in applied areas of study, they have the technology and the faculty expertise that make the conducting of applied research a natural complement to their related instructional activity. In one example, applied researchers at Southern Alberta Institute of Technology helped a new local firm develop a new type of highly efficient hot water boiler of which about 250 are now produced monthly. Twelve students were involved in development of the prototype, and six were eventually hired by the firm. Another example is the applied research for the aviation and aerospace industry provided by Red River College in Manitoba. Jim Madder, vice-president, academic, at Red Deer College in Alberta estimates that more than half of Canada’s community colleges have a formal applied research program, and at another thirty per cent some project-based research is being conducted (Ryval, 2005, p. E1). An indication of the extent to which colleges are involved in applied research is the funding that they have received from the Canada Foundation for Innovation (CFI). The CFI is an independent corporation created by the Government of Canada to strengthen the capacity of Canadian universities, colleges, research hospitals, and non-profit research institutions to carry out world-class research and technology development. As of the end of June, 2005, 30 colleges had received funding totaling over $30 million (Canadian Foundation for Innovation, 2005). An indication of how applied research has been recognized as a role of colleges is that the new Colleges Act in Ontario, unlike the previous Act, lists applied research as one of the core functions of the colleges – along with forming partnerships with industry.

The increasing involvement of colleges in externally funded research is reflective of the high level of technical expertise of their faculty and the corresponding sophistication of many of their occupational education programs, one consequence of which is that many university graduates subsequently enroll in colleges to acquire job ready skills. At one college in Ontario, for example, one in six applicants for occupational education programs is a university graduate, and the college has developed more than forty programs that cater specifically to university graduates. In a related vein, colleges now offer many joint baccalaureate programs with universities which combine courses from each type of institution. A particularly innovative example of such collaboration is a new campus in Toronto that was established jointly by the University of Guelph and Humber Institute of Technology and Advanced Learning (formerly Humber College). Every program at Guelph-Humber is designed by a team of faculty from each institution, and graduates earn both a diploma from Humber and a baccalaureate degree from the University. The first six programs developed were Business Administration, Computing, Early Childhood Education, Family and Community Social Services, Justice Studies and Police Foundations, and Media Studies, the last four being areas where the University did not have a program of its own. Another area of significant collaboration between community colleges and universities is nursing education. A baccalaureate in nursing is now required for registered nurses in most provinces, and many new nurses, including the vast majority in Ontario, receive their education in programs that are delivered jointly by colleges and universities.

Besides collaborating with universities in the provision of baccalaureate programs, colleges in Canada now offer some baccalaureate programs on their own. This trend started in the late 1980s when a handful of community colleges in British Columbia, mostly in areas that were distant from the nearest university, were given the authority to offer baccalaureate programs while maintaining their community college focus. These institutions were renamed “university colleges” to indicate their combined mandate. Now all community colleges in three of the four largest provinces – Ontario, British Columbia, and Alberta – may apply to a provincial quality assessment board to offer baccalaureate programs in applied fields of study, and as of October, 2005, about 40 colleges had obtained approval to offer over a hundred programs. Under recent legislation in Alberta, colleges in that province may apply to the Ministry for approval to offer baccalaureate programs in traditional academic areas, and one college, Grant MacEwan College in Edmonton, has obtained such approval. There are two rationales for this revolutionary development in which before long nearly half the colleges in Canada may be offering baccalaureate degree programs: to expand baccalaureate access, even in a country which already has one of the highest participation rates in baccalaureate programs in the world; and to offer an allegedly new type of postsecondary education in Canada, that combines the advanced liberal and theoretical education of the university with the high level technical and applied education of a college. An assumption underlying the second rationale is that such a type of education will enhance the competitiveness of Canadian industry. The first rationale is also related to globalization, as it is believed that a baccalaureate will be a more desired credential than a college diploma in an increasingly competitive, global labor market. The movement of colleges into baccalaureate education has been less controversial in Canada than in the United States, probably because the programs here have been largely restricted to applied fields of study and can thus be seen as extensions of existing career education role of the colleges. Still, this development raises many troubling questions about the future of the colleges, especially whether it will compromise the colleges’ historic commitment to academically and economically disadvantaged students (Skolnik, 2005b).