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On post-secondary thoughts

Let me begin by pledging my unwavering support for higher education. Lower education for that matter. Any education.
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Let me begin by pledging my unwavering support for higher education. Lower education for that matter. Any education. While I personally believe self-education is probably the single most important skill schools can teach — especially now with much of the world's knowledge only a mouse click away — there is a lot to be said for more traditional forms of learning, universities most notably.

I don't know what else I would have done with the decade I spent bouncing through the pinball game of post-secondary education, but I suspect I wouldn't have had as good a time doing it, especially had it involved squatting in a rice paddy somewhere in Vietnam while people I didn't know tried to kill me. That 10 years of undergraduate and graduate schools was golden. While I wouldn't call it the best years of my life, it was certainly fun and, well, educational.

But I don't think university is for everyone and I particularly don't think the traditional form of university is for everyone. Lawrence Summers, the former president of Harvard and former secretary of the Treasury in the U.S., has written a number of thoughtful pieces recently about how little the structure of university education has changed since, forever, and how hard it is to change it.

Notwithstanding the intervening decades, any of us or our parents or their parents if they were fortunate enough to attend, would find today's university experience remarkably similar our own. Students take a couple of courses each semester; courses meet for a couple of hours a week; someone stands in the front of a lecture hall and talks; students take tests and write papers and get graded on how well they parrot what they've been taught.

What part of that sounds like the kind of place you'd create if you were starting with a blank page today?

And just as university isn't the answer for everyone, it's not the answer for every place. Which makes the question this town is about to grapple with anything but academic. Is a university the answer for Whistler?

Whistler council is holding a special meeting on June 12 to begin to grapple with that question. Staff is scheduled to report with a process and timelines to engage the community — us — in discussions about post-secondary education opportunities in Whistler.

The nature of that engagement is, itself, interesting. This isn't limited to a discussion about the relative merits of WhistlerU in isolation. It should consider the proposal to build a university on the site north of Function Junction both on its own and in relation to other post-secondary education initiatives.

One of the alternatives was presented in last year's consultant's report. It suggested moving slowly into the enterprise by partnering with existing institutions, Capilano University for example, and being the locus for students' practicums in areas the town might be said to have on-the-ground expertise. The obvious ones might include resort management, ski area operation, culinary arts, hotel management.

This avenue represents a go-slow strategy requiring no addition to the built environment. We provide the experience, our partners provide formal faculty and students. We learn as we go, testing the waters so to speak.

WhistlerU is the flipside of that coin. It's a greenfield development of a full-blown university campus: buildings, dormitories, faculty, staff, students. Since it's being proposed for a site without the requisite zoning, bed units or Official Community Plan support, it's a decision requiring substantial public input.

I'm willing to be convinced, but these are some of the questions I hope we have a full discussion on.

Viability: I am not qualified to address the economic viability of the WhistlerU model. The proponents believe they have or can raise the capital to build the infrastructure. They have established post-secondary partners. They have a development plan for the operation of the university.

I am, however, qualified to evaluate the sensitivity or robustness of that plan. In other words, its critical mass or the point at which it sails off the edge of the world.

Without using it in a pejorative sense, WhistlerU is a real estate play. It represents an investment of private capital and capital demands a return, in this case from the operation of a university. I think it's incumbent on the proponents to explain, in detail, the nature and extent of the investment and the level of operation — income — necessary to make that investment work.

Why is that important? Simply this: If WhistlerU doesn't work, what is the impact on the town of a failed campus? With sufficient housing to accommodate up to 1,400-1,500 students and another 500 faculty and staff and the classroom/lab buildings to teach in, what happens to that if the assumptions of market demand prove faulty? How would that real estate investment be repurposed?

I'm not suggesting one should plan to fail, but one should definitely know what it takes to succeed and what happens to what's left behind in the event of failure.

Economic Diversification: Much has been promised in the advocacy for WhistlerU. But what is the real economic diversification for Whistler? There will be construction jobs while the facility is being built. But it's unlikely there will be very many permanent jobs, unless there are more qualified, university-level professors kicking around town than I'm aware of. Housekeeping jobs? We can barely fill the ones we have and we couldn't fill those without importing the labour from Squamish.

There would be a contribution to the town's coffers by way of property taxes but I haven't seen this figure quantified. And whatever taxes WhistlerU would pay, what would be monetary offset of providing water, sewer, transit and other municipal services?

How much incremental revenue would WhistlerU provide via room nights, restaurant meals and related spending in resort generated by their programs?

Social Sustainability: This is the 700-pound gorilla in the room. Assuming WhistlerU is a successful, tax-paying enterprise, how is it going to change the fundamental nature of this town? This isn't a last-immigrant-off- the-boat-please-roll-up-the-ramp argument. Everything that's been developed in this town has changed its nature. But everything's changed it in the same direction within the same broad mountain resort plan. And, yes, some of that change hasn't necessarily been for the better.

But WhistlerU is huge. At full flight, it represents something like a 20 per cent increase in the town's semi-permanent population. It represents a new direction not completely in harmony with the town's current and past direction. There's nothing inherently wrong with that, but it is something that will represent a sea change and something we should be going into with eyes wide open.

Those aren't all the questions I have, just all the space. The conversation is only beginning. We need facts and analyses, not generalities to make an enlightened decision.