Origins And Early Concordia

Chris Colley 0:13

Right. Welcome everybody. We are back with another episode of Shift Ed Podcast coming to you. I have uh our Dr. Graham Carr here, who is um from our Concordia University, who is the uh president and vice chancellor there. Um and Graham, you've been there for quite some time, uh, from what I can tell.

Graham Carr 0:35

Yeah, I've been there since 1983, Chris. So I said the furniture at this point.

Chris Colley 0:41

Right. And I guess my first question is like uh like what what are the most biggest surprises that you've encountered as you've uh you know uh established yourself here in Quebec in an English university? Um what sticks out to you as as uh this environment or this you know ecosystem that we have that surprised you the most um over over these years?

Graham Carr 1:06

Yeah, so uh you know, I grew up in Quebec. I grew up in the Eastern Townships, and then I I left to do uh to you know to do university, studied in uh Ontario and Sweden and the US, and then came to Concordia in '83 uh on a 10-month contract to teach history, and I'm still here. So I have to be honest, uh, Chris, when I when I first came to Concordia, I didn't know very much about the university at all. Um I arrived, it was uh less than 10 years after the merger had happened between Loyola and Sir George Williams University, which created Concordia. Um I was, you know, at that point just pretty much focused on trying to get my feet on the ground and see if there was a future for me in academia. I wasn't paying a lot of attention to the bigger picture. Um and I think what uh what I see now is that uh um at that time in the uh in the early 80s and maybe through the 80s and early 90s, the university served a pretty vital uh function uh in Montreal in particular, uh in terms of of providing uh educational opportunities for um uh you know a lot of individuals who who might not otherwise have seen um university as an option for them. There were a lot of part-time students at that point. Uh there were a lot of I was struck when I first arrived at the university by the number of uh of uh adult learners, uh people who were working during the day and doing courses at

Concordia’s Growth And Mission Shift

Graham Carr 2:45

night. And it was a, you know, it was a very um I think community-oriented uh university. And you could tell that it was really anchored in in Montreal. Over time, the university's changed a lot. It's it's grown. Uh, you know, we're now close to 50,000 uh students all in, full-time, part-time, continuing education, regular academic programs, graduate, undergraduate. And demographically, you know, the universities become much more diverse as well. So I think it's playing uh I I I continue to believe that Concordia is uh a pivotal institution for Montreal and for Quebec, but it's it's playing a different role today than than it had in the had in the past, that's for sure. Totally.

Chris Colley 3:34

And Graham, could you give us kind of a state of affair of how's it going now? In in in you know, I know that our are English universities um, you know, new bills coming in, you know, demographics changing. Um where do we stand right now as as you know, an English university within the province of Quebec?

Graham Carr 3:54

Yeah,

The Financial Crunch Across Canada

Graham Carr 3:55

so maybe I'll before I get specifically to English universities, Chris, what I would say is that this is a really challenging time for universities generally in Canada. Um so I think if you look across the country with relatively few exceptions, universities are facing very severe um financial challenges. That's certainly the case at Concordia, where we're we're we're dealing with uh a significant uh uh structural deficit, but we're not alone. The vast majority of universities in Quebec are in a deficit situation, and many, many universities across the country find themselves in that situation. It's not just about um the economic health of the university system, however. I think there's there's you know there's been a certain amount of um public critique of universities uh over the last few years. Some of it has happened south of the border and has bled into uh the Canadian context with people you know questioning um the value of a university degree, whether it's still um uh a worthwhile investment uh for students and for parents. I would say the answer to that is unequivocally yes, and the data certainly um underscores that, but the questions and the skepticism are out there. Uh you know, I think I think that's uh those are realities that uh all universities are are trying to address right now. For anglophone universities in Quebec, well, there are three of us, and we're very different, you know. So um Bishops has has one reality, McGill has another, and Concordia has a third. And um obviously uh it's been a challenge for the three of us, particularly since uh the fall of 2023, when the government of Quebec uh, you know, introduced a number of policies that were targeted at the Anglophone institutions. There's there's no other way around it. Um and I think were designed to make us weaker, um, which I'm very troubled by um for obvious reasons.

Quebec Policies And Anglophone Impact

Graham Carr 6:10

Uh I think those policies uh that were introduced, which raised the tuition that rest of Canada students would have to pay, which changed the formula um for the funding of international students so that we we we ended up paying back money to the government of Quebec instead of conserving tuition fee. That weakened our economic situation, our financial situation, our budget situation, and it created a reputational uh challenge for us because it sent a very negative signal um outside the province about uh how welcoming uh Quebec was. Um now uh unfortunately all universities in the network in Quebec are are tasting this bitter medicine because of other policies that government has introduced, um, both at the federal and provincial level and restricting uh student visas, uh lumping international students into larger questions around immigration when international students are not immigrants. They're they're here on study permits.

Chris Colley 7:19

Right.

Graham Carr 7:20

Um and of course, that in Quebec, uh, within the last uh uh month or two, we see uh other bills on the horizon. Uh Bill One, the constitutional bill, which uh you know makes no provision for uh academic freedom, uh which has created a number of concerns within the university uh community about, for example, our ability to, as a public institution, um to take legal action against the government of Quebec as we had done in the past, uh if we feel that that's the only recourse that's left. And which um which uh denies multiculturalism as a as a as the principle. And obviously for a university like Concordia, but I would argue, frankly, for most universities in Quebec, we are very multicultural at this point. But that that ideologically is not um where the where the discussion, uh the political discussion is uh in the in the province at the moment. And then most recently, the proposed bill Bill 9 on uh l'ECIT on secularism uh obviously has provisions in it which directly uh affect activities happening on university campuses, but also potentially uh academic uh academic opportunities for students in in education, for example. So there's a whole uh cocktail of policy challenges, some of which are are especially um harsh for anglophone institutions, and others of which are just generally um a challenge for for universities as a whole. I I I think unfortunately the the university sec this is my seventh year as president of the university, and I was in senior administration

Identity, Data, And Public Perception

Graham Carr 9:15

previously. I I think unfortunately we're at a point where the the health of universities in Quebec is is is uh is less um strong today than it was seven or eight years ago.

Chris Colley 9:30

Wow, wow. And what when you're facing all of this, like I imagine there's lots of conversation about you know strategies, how do we adapt ourselves, how do we like what what is Concordia looking at in a way to adapt to this continuously changing landscape that as you said, we're all kind of facing here in in Quebec.

Graham Carr 9:55

I think there are a few things, and again, the the recipe is different for the for each of the three uh three universities. Um you know, part of the challenge, uh uh Chris, is to is to get um Monsieur, Madame tout le monde and certainly the government to understand what Concordia actually is. You know, we're constantly faced with stereotypes, so even, you know, I'm I'm I'm even somewhat uncomfortable with the labeling of Concordia as an Anglophone university, because yes, we're a university that delivers courses and delivers services primarily in English, but we serve a much wider population. We're not just serving the 10-11 percent of Quebec society that is defined as anglophone. Uh 70% of our students come from Quebec, but uh somewhere between 25 and 30 percent of our student body is francophone. Um and we have uh a significant international student component as well. So, so part of the challenge, I think, in terms of how we how we respond to this rapidly changing situation is to is to is to constantly remind people of who we actually are as opposed to who we are sometimes caricatured as. And and unfortunately, in some of the public policy, uh policy, uh, policies that we've seen in the last couple of years, they've been based on stereotypes, not not data. And and the interesting and the judgment uh that we received, you know, was very clear about the lack of data-driven uh policy with regard to uh some of the provisions that the government was push pushing forward. So I think that part of it is to assess or tr or to communicate who we actually are, communicate what the value is that we bring to uh Quebec society. I yes, we bring value to the Anglophone community, but we bring value to the entirety of Quebec society and I think to all of Canada as well. And because

Differentiation And Value Proposition

Graham Carr 12:05

the situation is changing so rapidly, it the the challenge is how you adapt to that um in terms of your adjusting your recruitment strategy or establishing the priorities uh in a period of economic um uh challenge. You can't do everything uh that you were once doing. So what are the things that you need to prioritize going forward that you think will differentiate you? And for me, this is the big challenge for any university is how do you differentiate yourself? What is the value proposition that you're putting out there for potential students, for parents, for partners and collaborators in the research sphere that um that will lead them uh to want to be part of that, uh to be to make to make you a university of choice. And I think that's that's the the uh the challenge that we face. That challenge has become a lot more difficult because of the negative perceptions around around uh um Quebec and to some degree Canada. Um and uh and I think we you know we really need to battle on that front.

Chris Colley 13:27

I totally agree with you too that educational institutions are really bad at selling themselves, you know, like it's just maybe not bad, but we we tend to, you know, like want to support and we do all this great community and and and growing our kids and getting them ready to be active members of society, but that selling aspect, I guess, is is sometimes we struggle with, you know, like we're not a business, but we kind of are, you know, like so so you know we we don't have we we communicate who we are, but we don't market who we are.

Graham Carr 14:04

And and I think you know this is a this is an issue that we actually have to discuss very seriously within the university. Um the global context, and I really mean the global context for universities has changed dramatically in the last 10 to 15 years, and um how you position yourself um has become just that much more complicated because of the competition uh for space that's out there, because of the competition for students that's out there. Students have a lot of choice right now. You know, in Quebec, students have a choice of 17 or 18 universities if they want to stay here. If they want to, if they want to look at Canada as a whole, they have a choice of 95 universities. If they want to look in terms of North America, the choice goes up by thousands. And if they want to look globally, we're talking 10,000s. And that's true for students elsewhere as well. You know, a student growing up in in uh uh in China or Hong

Marketing, Competition, And Choice

Graham Carr 15:05

Kong or Lebanon or or Germany, um, you know, they've got a lot of options as well. So I think that has changed the dynam the the the global dynamic around education. And it and you know, if you don't market yourself, if you don't communicate effectively, uh you're not gonna be seen as a first choice, first choice university. Absolutely. Absolutely.

Chris Colley 15:33

And with all of that also comes staying relevant in as the world evolves, um and with the advent of AI coming into our worlds, um, I mean it blew the doors open of education. Uh yeah. How do we adapt to uh this new landscape that we're all kind of facing? And I mean, frankly, in the public sector, we are skating a bit, you know. Um how how we're gonna adapt our our education and how we teach and how we evaluate um seems to have to adjust a little bit. How how are the universities dealing with this new influx of this new technology that that just seems like it's gonna be getting bigger and bigger? I mean, I heard the turnover is about seven months of AI at this point, where you know it reinvents itself. How do we reinvent ourselves at that pace?

Graham Carr 16:25

Yeah, so I look, I think all organizations are skating. It's not just the uh it's not just the education sector. I think businesses are trying to figure out uh what the what the workforce of tomorrow is going to look like, what jobs are gonna be um replaced by uh by by AI. Uh what does the implementation of AI mean in terms of creating new kinds of jobs? Um that's it's and it's a very fast-evolving,

AI Disruption And Academic Change

Graham Carr 16:53

um, fast evolving world. I mean, we have some advantages in the university in that we, you know, we have researchers who who for whom AI and the application of AI is the primary area of focus. So we have expertise to draw on in in-house. And I think, you know, in terms of curriculum development and teaching, you know, there's lots of experimentation happening within the university. Um and and and it's across the spectrum of experiences from those who are comfortable with trying to adopt and adopt, and others who are very skeptical and resistant. And and I think that's true um, you know, across the spross the the lines of faculty, staff, students. You know, we're we're human beings, and we respond to technology and technology change and disruption very differently. Um one of the challenges for university, of course, is you you need to stay uh as relevant as possible, but it's not as easy as it may seem to integrate change into university. You know, for places that put a premium on discovery, on creativity, on imagination, universities tend to be remarkably conservative and and and not always very nimble in terms of how they adapt to change. So now I think there's an acceleration effect that's happening, which is putting new pressure um on systems everywhere and on how people think um that's that's forcing uh forcing different conversations and forcing uh forcing change. Um I can't forecast how this is going to play out over the course of the next few years, but I'll give you one very concrete example. Something that Concordia uh committed to um three years ago was that every undergraduate student, regardless of the program that they were in at the university, whether it was in fine arts, business, engineering, or the sciences, would have access as part of a four-credit program to what we call experiential learning, which could mean work-integrated learning, co-op stage, it could mean uh mobility exchanges with uh with uh universities elsewhere, it could mean participation in um in case competitions uh with mentors, etc. And the goal of that is to provide students with uh an augmented learning experience that goes beyond the classroom and brings them into contact with with the real world or the non-academic world. You know, we used to have a tagline at Concordia Real Education for the Real World, and we pulled back from that. I think maybe that was a mistake. Um So for programs like that to be successful, you have to be in very close communication with potential employers. And you have to understand what their needs are. What is it that they're looking for when they hire a co op? Student, or as is increasingly the case for large organizations like Bombardier or EY, when they hire 15 or 20 students at a time to work

Experiential Learning As A Response

Graham Carr 20:10

on a problem. So that gives us an opportunity to have a genuine exchange about how the skills needed to translate into the workforce to make the transition into the workforce may be changing, and how can we adapt and better prepare our students in that regard? So for me, that's a that's a very specific example of how universities can be responsive to the disruption that's happening there, not by acting on our own, by but by uh acting in collaboration with others, uh other actors and society.

Chris Colley 20:43

I guess my final question, Graham, is we do have this this uh this pipeline, as I mentioned, of you know, where kids start in K, they go into Elementary High School, some move on to CJEP and then university. How and and you were talking about collaboration, and it just kind of struck me as how do we how can we collaborate better, do you think? So that we're getting kids that are going to be able to contribute not only to uh Quebec society, but also to our GDP. Um and what do you think that the most important uh skills that we should be working on in our youth sector that would then uh support you guys in the higher ed that maybe that maybe that we're not we're we're overseeing a little bit?

Graham Carr 21:34

Well, that's a really good question. I'm not sure that uh we've really taken a look at in Quebec at the um at the at the at the chain of education, that we've seen it as a system, as a pipeline. We've tended to look at things as fairly discrete entities. Obviously, we're we're um recruiting a lot of students from SagePs. So, you know, there's a grid in terms of what what the uh um what the entry scores are for different programs, et cetera. Um, you know, I I think there's space definitely for a for a stronger collaboration uh and and identification of of um of skills

Pipeline, Collaboration, And Skills

Graham Carr 22:15

that we're looking for. A couple of things that I would point out is um, you know, I think when we're when we're at Concordia Um in the business of recruiting, it goes back to what I said about positioning and differentiation. So, what is it that we can offer students that uh uh that they might not get elsewhere? And part of that begins with the quality of the student experience. So that you know, the the university experience is a very formative moment for 18 to 24-year-olds. How how can you augment that? But also to go back to what I just said, if we're placing this emphasis on on experiential learning, on work-integrated learning, how do we make that known to prospective students that that they can be thinking ahead to, oh yes, I can do a business program, I can do a business program at this school or that school. I mean, you'd be crazy not to choose the John Molson School of Business right now because it was just named by Bloomberg Business Week as the top business school in in Canada. Um but part of that is also because of all of the opportunities that the business school offers to students to participate in case competitions, to participate in co-op, et cetera, which are real trampolines to move on into the next uh into the into the next phase of one's life. Something else that's been a big success for us in the last few years has been a startup incubator that we've been running on campus called District Three. And and the reason why that's become a success, I think, is because we realize that there are, and we're not unique in this, but we realize that there are a lot of university-age students who have an entrepreneurial spirit. And there's not been a classic pathway for them within traditional academic programs to express that entrepreneurship. So the success of the uh of the incubator, and it's drawing students from all faculties, from the arts, from uh sciences, engineering, etc., the success of that incubator is that it provides yet another opportunity over and above the learning that you have in the classroom and your academic program to really express yourself as an individual and move on to do great, to do, to do other things. So I think making sure that people know that those opportunities are there, the prospective students know that those opportunities are there, that it's clear, you know, through the chain of high school and sage up that, you know, you're not just programming students to enter a uh, you know, biology

Entrepreneurship And District 3

Graham Carr 25:01

major or a chemistry minor or whatever, but you're you're trying to expose them to a wider university experience. You know, one of the areas where I think we've been hugely successful is actually in our Faculty of Fine Arts. Um, you know, the Faculty of Fine Arts is uh probably the top fine arts program in all of Canada. Um, it draws uh uh students to um, you know, outstanding programs in the studio arts and photography. We've just created a new school of the performing arts. We have uh you know the largest cinema school, one of the two largest cinema schools in in North America, um, and unique programs like design and computation arts. Students are potential students are just bashing down the doors to get into those programs. Yeah, and you see the impact at the other end too. And and to me, if I can circle back to you know one of the first questions, when I look at the contribution that Concordia is making to Quebec society, I you know, it's also the incredible contribution that Concordia is making, not only to the vibrancy of Anglophone Quebec society, and you know, you can look at Governor General's awards winners and winners of Montreal literary book prizes and so on and so forth. And there's a huge list there. It's also what we're contributing to the vitality of uh the francophone identity of Quebec culture. You know, one of our researchers, Nadia Amir, uh uh was awarded the Bourgeois Prize a couple of weeks ago. That's the top prize uh for contemporary art in in Quebec. It's like a prize offered during the context of Votre Québec. Well, you know, there have been five Concordia winners in the last seven years of that prize. That's that's saying something.

Chris Colley 27:00

Um that's a greedy change.

Graham Carr 27:01

In terms of film, you know, Jessica Lee Gagne, one of our graduates, the first woman to win a cinematography Emmy Award uh

Fine Arts Impact And Cultural Bridge

Graham Carr 27:10

this year for her work on severance. Um, you know, people like Chloe Robichot, the uh the cinematographer whose film uh De Femme en Or has been a bit of a sensation this last year. She's a concordiograph. Natalie Petrovsk is a concordio. Mark Sagan is a concordiograph. So we're also it's concordia is not just um an instrument for the uh development of of uh uh anglophone culture and society, we're really plugged into the reality of Quebec and and I think uh from a in terms of in terms of the francophone culture and identity. And you know, if there's something we could do to break down that artificial distinction between anglophone and francophone um solitudes and talk instead about about what Concordia contributes and brings value to the to the identity of Quebec as a whole, that would be a great place for Concordia to land in the future.

Chris Colley 28:13

Absolutely. So well said, Graham. Um we're gonna leave it at that because I think that that statement is something we need to think about. And there's lots of partners out there, there's lots of community out there that I think sometimes just little bridges need to be built to you know elevate the beauty of Quebec. Um in its languages and its cultures and its diversity. Um so I I really appreciate your time, Graham, and and and kind of shining a little bit of a light on uh where we're at and where we want to go. Um lots to think about. Um, and I really want to thank you for your time today and just sharing your your thoughts and uh very insightful. Um, I really enjoyed it. So thanks for having me. Oh, pleasure.

Graham Carr 28:59

Thanks for the invitation, Chris. I enjoyed the conversation.

Chris Colley 29:01

So awesome. Thanks so much.

Graham Carr 29:03

All right, uh take care for the rest of the season.