Toronto, ON, May 1, 2013 — Today, four of Canada’s top-ranked post-secondary institutions — Acadia, Bishop’s, Mount Allison, and St. Francis Xavier universities — with long-established reputations for their exceptional living/learning communities, announced that they have formed a strategic alliance. The U4 League, which is composed of four of the country’s oldest universities in three different provinces, has been established to promote and extend the institutions’ common objectives of providing students from across Canada and around the world with the highest quality undergraduate university education in a residential setting.

The small, residential undergraduate university model is prevalent and highly valued in the United States and is represented by several well-known liberal arts universities, such as Amherst, Bowdoin, Middlebury, Swarthmore, and Williams. This is in stark contrast to the situation in Canada where large, urban, research-focused institutions are the norm.

 “It is time for a frank and action-oriented discussion about the quality of undergraduate education in Canada,” says Michael Goldbloom, Principal at Bishop’s University and Chair of the U4 League. “We have created this alliance in part in response to contemporary concerns — expressed by students, parents, educators, and media commentators — that the quality of undergraduate education has been deteriorating. As a direct result of their financial challenges, many universities have been growing their undergraduate enrollments, while focusing their resources primarily on building graduate programs and research capacity.

 

 

“Many undergraduates find themselves in classes with hundreds of students. The direct contact with their professors is very limited,” says Goldbloom.

“Acadia, Bishop’s, Mount Allison, and St. Francis Xavier, who attract students from across Canada, have each been leaders in undergraduate education for more than 150 years. We have demonstrated that true learning is nurtured and sustained by deep student engagement in all aspects of the university experience. We have been — and will continue to be — friendly rivals, but we believe that this partnership of our four universities will accelerate our drive to improve and share our unique model of undergraduate excellence.”

Although the four universities have traditionally competed to attract students, they believe that by collaborating they can enhance the quality of each institution to the benefit of all of their students.

This collaboration will be pursued in several ways:

• Designing collaborative programs, courses, activities, and exchanges that students from each university can access — both on campus and abroad;
• Implementing best practice approaches to improve the quality of university teaching;
• Increasing the teaching, research, and professional opportunities for faculty in each other’s universities;
• Developing joint research activities, particularly those that increase opportunities for U4 undergraduate students;
• Pursuing joint analyses of their institutional operations to determine how they can be improved; and,
• Implementing best practices in administration by cooperating, where possible, in service delivery, technology, and infrastructure, in order to contain costs and increase efficiencies.

By adapting and harnessing best practices in pedagogy, management, and technology, U4 members will act collectively as a “living laboratory” to demonstrate why smarter can be better than bigger. The U4 League universities have already been working together. In February at Bishop’s, faculty and students from all four institutions held a series of TEDx Talks focusing on undergraduate education. The event included a student debate on the future of undergraduate education, and a taping of an episode of CBC’s popular comedy program, The Debaters. The TEDx Talks can be found at http://www.tedxbishopsu.ca/talks.html .

The second event, held earlier this week at Mount Allison University, explored the unique teaching and learning opportunities — including student contributions to undergraduate teaching — that students experience at small, primarily undergraduate universities.

“We are optimistic about the possibilities for sustained collaboration in a wide range of academic and extracurricular areas,” says Goldbloom. “We have already hosted two successful events at Bishop’s and Mount Allison, with students and faculty from each campus participating. We will also hold an Undergraduate Research Showcase at Acadia and a Student Leadership Forum at St.FX next fall.

“We believe the U4 alliance will allow Canadians to understand more clearly the benefits that a small-scale university experience offers students. Now that the U4 League has been launched, we will be inviting our professors, students, and staff to explore the myriad ways that we might collaborate to our mutual advantage,” says Goldbloom.

Acadia, Bishop’s, Mount Allison, and St. Francis Xavier all offer intimate-scale, undergraduate experiences, inspired by the best traditions of liberal education and fuelled by close student connections with faculty, staff, and peers. In a wide variety of rankings, the numbers speak eloquently about the value and impact of this approach. Each institution does very well in national rankings such as Maclean’s and The Globe and Mail. The most recent National Survey of Student Engagement (NSSE) demonstrated clearly that students who attend smaller institutions are the most satisfied with their university educations and that, if they had it to do over, they are the most likely to choose the university that they have attended.

The U4 League members want to ensure that Canada’s students continue to have access to the unique advantages of small-scale (under 4,500 students), student-centered, residential universities. For more information, visit www.u4league.ca.

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Media Contacts:

Gloria Jollymore, Vice-President, University Advancement, Mount Allison University, tel: 506-364-2261 (gjollymore@mta.ca).

 

Célie Cournoyer, Communications Manager, Bishop’s University, tel: 819-822-9600 x2263 (celie.cournoyer@ubishops.ca).