The return to the classroom to almost normal is happening in Quebec universities. While many people are happy about it, university leaders seem to be making efforts to establish long-term distance education. It is obvious that distance education is a strong asset when the time comes to deal with crisis situations like the one we are going through, or to offer special teaching conditions for certain programs with more atypical courses. Extending distance learning too widely would, however, be a fatal mistake for some Quebec universities, and some managements do not seem to understand the extent of this potential misstep.
These university administrators who push vigorously for distance learning without regard to context, for financial reasons largely based on international attraction, are digging the grave of their establishment with a smile on their face, erasing without remorse their own experience. . If you believe that today’s rectors and deans, during their university careers, have had as experience only that of their class sessions, think again. They were the first people to actively participate in research groups, to organize evenings for committees, to take advantage of unofficial evenings of networking after their classes, to get involved in their student associations.
Some directors offer to survey students to ask them their preference. If one asks the cohorts of the last two years, the chances that the balance tips towards distance education are great. They and they have known empty universities, without cafes to meet and work together, without bars to drop out in groups at the end of the school day, without sports, cultural or humorous activities in the evening; without integration activities or 5 to 7 from student associations, without shows, without groups that organize themselves around a thousand and one interests.
Without life.
Anyone who has had the chance to take advantage of this university life will tell you without hesitation that the learning that these establishments can offer us depends at least as much, if not more, on everything that surrounds the classes than on the school career itself. same. It is up to the students to seize it, but it is up to the universities to offer them this opportunity.
It is obvious that the current funding formula for universities does not work in favor of them. These directions regularly evoke international competition to justify themselves, claiming to have no other choice. For my part, I would go with a warning to them: if you play the game of international competition and online passage, you will lose. You will never be able to compete for long in terms of influence, attractiveness, reputation and resources against the major European and American universities. What you can do, however, is build vibrant, vibrant, active universities; campuses where people want to study, but also to live; linked and strong communities, which resist over time. Like these neighborhood businesses in which it is good to go, established for 60 years, central to the life of their community, spaces for reunions and friendships which still resist Walmart and Amazon.
Because ultimately, let’s stop lying to ourselves: in the great international digitized “market” of universities, UQAM, UQTR, the University of Sherbrooke, Concordia and company are not much more than piece.