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Of educations and institutions

School days, school daze, dear old golden…. I have an unabashed bias toward schools and learning. Like most people in this part of the world, I spent most of the first 18 years of my life in school.
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School days, school daze, dear old golden….

I have an unabashed bias toward schools and learning. Like most people in this part of the world, I spent most of the first 18 years of my life in school. Aside from family values, nothing shaped and/or distorted most of our lives quite like the experience of going to school. School forged our social skills, academic interests — or, far too often, lack thereof — penchant for lifelong learning and ability to navigate our way successfully through life.

My relationship with school was so positive I hung around for an extra decade, pinballing through various programs at various universities. Richard Nixon’s inability to grasp peace with honour in Vietnam accounted for only a part of that time, full-time student status being the ultimate safety net between me and an inglorious army career. Procrastinating against the inevitable, grinding duties of adulthood was likely a subtext. But the simple joy at learning new things was, ultimately, the motivating force.

Not surprisingly, that joy outlasted my time in school. Attempting to figure out things I don’t know has been the organizing principle of my life. Fortunately, there are so many things I don’t know — a point repeatedly driven home to me by people who disagree with almost everything I say on this page — that I’ll run short of breath and heartbeat long before I run out of curiosity.

One of the things I do know, or am at least pretty certain of, is that the University of Whistler makes about as much sense as taking brand new skis up the mountain on opening day this year. The UofW likely gasped its last breath during the recently concluded municipal election but I suspect its proponents will kick the can a few more times before this turkey dies.

The UofW is a real estate play wrapped in a cloak of academia housed in an impenetrable shell of diversification. Surprisingly, motherhood wasn’t woven into its myth to provide a final layer of respectability against which no opposition could be mounted.

The question was put to several of the hopefuls at the all-candidates meeting during the campaign, “Are you in favour of diversification?” Well, duh. Fortunately, the ruse didn’t work. The intention behind the question — are you in favour of the UofW proposal — was tickled out, making opposition easy.

Even assuming Whistler is a one-trick pony — it’s not — we would be wise to choose carefully the paths to our diversification. One of the overlooked knocks against an institution of higher learning is the obvious clash between the school year calendar and the seasonal dance of a ski town… which we still are. Whether on the semester, trimester or quarter system, universities tend to be busiest between September and May. While that schedule embraces our shoulder seasons, it also runs full-bore against our bread and butter season.

If anything embodies the clash between supply and demand in this town, it’s accommodation. We can’t adequately house the people we need to make the town run during the winter. From workerbee to middle manager, housing is Whistler’s Holy Grail. Diversifying into a whole new area that runs on roughly the same schedule isn’t going to do anything to alleviate our chronic housing shortage. If we build it, they may come. But where in the world will they stay? Universities run on faculty, support staff and students. All of them need a place to live… temporarily in the case of students, permanently in the case of faculty and staff. Building a university means hitching our wagon to a vastly expanded footprint and exacerbating a problem the solution to which has eluded us since Alta Lake became Whistler.

And that assumes the business plan for the UofW succeeds. While it may be able to, over time, develop successful offerings in hotel management, tourism, mountain ecology and others, I don’t have a pipe big enough to dream the UofW could ever mount an MBA program that’d throw a worry into Queens, McGill, Western, UBC or, frankly, McDonald’s Hamburger U, provincial approval notwithstanding.

As well-intentioned as the proponents of UofW might be and as big as they might dream, the underlying motivation is simply the latest attempt to develop marginal land in Whistler, the Zen lands. This stretch of shelf and swamp between Alta Lake Road and Function Junction is zoned for development that probably makes marginal economic sense. Other attempts to upzone it have failed, this one will too.

But the politics of land development aside, Whistler does have opportunities to pursue education as a legitimate economic diversification strategy. The insurmountable barrier to the UofW idea is the marriage between education and institution. This town will likely never be in a position to support and absorb an educational institution. But if you decouple the two concepts and jettison the institutional element, Whistler can very definitely realize economic gains from supporting an entrepreneurial effort to position education within our tourist economy landscape.

To a modest degree, we already do. Each year we provide a clinical practicum for Cap College students who live and work here to learn more about tourism management, mountain recreation and ski area operation.

The real synergy though lies in the leveraging our strengths and existing education markets. What are our strengths? We have a large and underutilized infrastructure. That includes tourist accommodation ranging from many star — Pan Pacific, Chateau — to no star, such as Whistler Blackcomb’s House, jam-packed during winter, uncrowded during summer. Rooms and fully-equipped condos that run several hundred dollars a night during the peak of winter’s ski season go begging at $79/night during much of the shoulders and summer.

Our natural beauty is a strength. So are the recreational, educational and adventure opportunities available on the mountains and throughout the valley. We have a highly educated populace, a broad array of artists in many media, outstanding outdoor activities, talented chefs, an internationally recognized and award winning sustainability plan and enough interesting nooks and crannies to offer a kaleidoscope of adventures for anyone interested in poking their noses in our hidden and not-so hidden places.

If you don’t think that’s enough to form the basis of successful lifelong learning and business opportunities, check out the Elderhostel program. ( www.elderhostel.org ) As one of many programs that try to link people with a passion to learn and great travel destinations, it’s probably a better model to follow if we’re interested in developing a grassroots education component to our resort town. It recognizes the fact that we are the institution, education is the process.

Of the 37 active Elderhostel programs running in British Columbia, only one touches down in Whistler… for one night. Talk about wasting talent.