Postsecondary Education Politics in BC, Part 1
(for Part 2, see below)

WorldwideUniversity.edu is the domain of a worldwide consortium university. To see how Vancouver University - from its very beginning - has been transnational in perspective and membership, click here. For a summary description of how VUW functions, click here.

Vancouver University Worldwide now has member colleges - and some 3820 students - in Africa, the Americas, Asia, Australasia, and Europe. These are not branch-plants or franchises. The member colleges have equal status on the Board of the university's colleges society (a registered charity in Canada and the USA - donations large and small welcomed).

Vancouver University Worldwide is a globally-membered non-governmental organization. Occasionally it may have the same fundamental 'foot-hold' or 'head-office base-location' problems which can adversely affect any international NGO at times, as detailed in the Raymond Spencer Rodgers book, Facilitation Problems of International Associations, published by the Union of International Associations, Brussels.

As an Olympic venue, British Columbia should be actively seeking to attract global international non-governmental organizations - in such fields as sport, education, outdoor learning, international cooperation, etc - and enthusiastically retain Vancouver University Worldwide in such context. [There is already a Commonwealth intergovernmental organization headquartered in Vancouver - the Commonwealth of Learning.]

Vancouver University seeks a campus for its Whistler College (Society). Tax-deductible donations (Canada and IRS) are welcomed.

On 30 May 2001, imediately following the provincial election, Supreme Court Justice Fraser declined to hear motions commenced against Vancouver University by the PPSEC during the dying days of a departing government. Accompanying president Dr Rodgers were Board representatives including the Chair (Thomas Tong), alumni (Peter Chern), students (Christine Lawson), constituent-member colleges and faculty (Mesalu Gebrehiwot), affiliate-member colleges (Heather Rankin), and others. On 8 Jan 2002 the matter resumed and Vancouver University presented fact about its statutory-context degree authority and Common Law precedents. After two days of hearings, Mr Justice Maczko declined to grant any injunction whatsoever against our decades-old programs and award of degrees. And at the commencement of the second day of Hearings, Mr Justice Maczko directed Crown counsel to advise the Minister of Advanced Education that he, Judge Maczko, perceived Vancouver University as having been discriminatorily treated as compared with other private post-secondary entities and that such inequity be addressed by the Minister. Accompanying president Dr Rodgers were, for various periods, Board members Chair Thomas Tong, Peter Low, Heather Rankin, and Li-kuan Tham. Inter alia, a statement by Christine Lawson expressing student concern was accepted by the Court.

This website reflects the input of various persons - board, faculty, alumni, students, and others. The present segment is provided by president Dr Raymond Rodgers, who accepts sole responsibility for its presence and wording. Dr Rodgers has been a member of the AAUP and CAUT faculty associations; served on the executive of an union (ACTRA Winnipeg 1969); and believes that unions (of postsecondary teachers, bureaucrats, etc) have a proper place in contemporary society. They can also make fundamental strategy mistakes.

In recent decades the unions of the BC bureaucracy, and certain post-secondary faculty and journalist union members, have mistakenly believed that a public-sector monopoly of post-secondary education could be maintained inter alia by stunting BC's domestic independent secular Vancouver University. Throughout this period, since the commencement of the Vancouver Institute of Post-secondary Studies and Point Roberts WA Institute in 1970, Dr Rodgers has endeavoured to explain the folly of this strategy. He has also for decades urged the few struggling domestic BC independent institutions to network for collective strength, and to express appreciation for exceptional public sector individuals who at times tried to put broad social benefit above petty, narrow, public-sector-union covert bully tactics.

The BC governments (Social Credit Party) of the Seventies and Eightees could have provided the basis for a healthy domestic independent post-secondary sector in BC [and an example for all of Canada] if they had extended their partial funding of non-profit independent schools to the secular non-profit post-secondary sector.

The failure to do so set the ground for the unhealthy contemporary state of the post-secondary sector in BC: one in which the public institutions and bureaucracy have generally denigrated domestic BC independent post-secondaries and thereby unwittingly invited a flock of satellite programs to parachutte into the province from abroad. [A collateral problem has been the self-defeating habit of the few BC independents themselves snidely denigrating each other].

There was one year 1982/3 when distinguished counsel (former Member of Parliament etc) Art Lee made significant headway with the BC Government, and New Summits was granted "university college" name and thus (by Common Law precedents) status. Our 1983-84 VIPS/New Summits Convocation had Mike Harcourt as guest of honour, and in 1992 - during his premiership - our name was changed to Vancouver University, with college(s) pluralized into full university context.

Other than that, the bureaucracy and public post-secondary unions have largely marginalized the BC domestic non-profit independent sector - and bundled it (and bungled it) with proprietary trade schools and satellite programs parachutted to BC from abroad (student authorizations being more readily secured in Canada than F visas in the United States).

So a long-standing media-ignored policy debate came to a critical head when the BCCAT, BCCIE, PPSEC, SCOET and similar ventures were initiated circa 1990. At a meeting at the time, the then deputy minister told those present that the PPSEC - from which Trinity Western and Vancouver University are appropriately exempt - would regulate trades schools, private colleges lacking degree authority, and all postsecondary programs (degree or otherwise) brought to BC from elsewhere. He went on to say also that the other mentioned organizations - the BCCATs etc - would accept only public institutions into membership. Dr Rodgers thereupon predicted that not only would the BC public postsecondaries and bureaucracy continue the misguided policy of trying to thwart BC's only secular independent university, and other domestic colleges - they would also thereby unwittingly invite institutions from other jurisdictions (where degree status is relatively much easier to acquire) to parachutte branch campuses or locally-hosted programs into BC. That unintended effect then commenced, there now being some twenty-five degree-context foreign-institution branch operations in Vancouver BC, including that of the University of Phoenix - and with the largest imports usually hiring away a senior PPSEC employee in the process of their establishment in BC. [The PPSEC could appropriately be named the Proprietary and Parachutted-programs Education Sector Commission - but unfortunately BC non-profit non-degree programs were also included in their jurisdiction, with no sensitivity to their intrinsic difference of motivation and goals.] The result is an uneven playing field with the public institutions on one side, the parachutted programs on the other, and Vancouver University's BC constituent programs in difficult middle position. See >*< below, and note the similar BC media divide.

Given BC's physical and communications (i.e., cultural) proximity to the USA, the parroting of the American "accreditation" context by the PPSEC and various other BC entities is grossly misleading. E.g., PPSEC "accreditation" conveys no course credit transfer to the BC public universities and no welcome or acceptance by the BC Council on Admissions and Transfers, BC Centre for International Education, PASBC, etc. Similarly misleading is use of the expression "government accredited" - when it means only that an entity's institutional membership is confined to government (public) universities and colleges.

[E.g., Vancouver (then New Summits) University had international students long before the public colleges and schoolboards were permitted to accept them; and had a contract with the VSB to provide senior secondary / advanced placement Mandarin and Japanese courses to VSB students needing same - in the years years before any BC secondary schools or community colleges taught these subjects, etc. But the BCCIE has never invited Vancouver University to membership. Its website says it accepts only "government accredited" members - a misleading way of saying that it accepts only public institutions into its membership.]

These discriminations against Vancouver University are ideologically and market-capture motivated and maintained by what amounts to an abuse of public authority. These entities should be clearly identified as functioning, in large part, as marketing tools - and (along with the Advanced Education ministry's own website) not misleadingly portray postsecondary education as though only BC public universities exist and conduct programs in BC. [All university programs conducted in BC, even the imported ones, should be listed - appropriately differentiated as to public or independent status, and derivation]. Note also that currently a public sector union - the College and Institute Educators Association of BC - is explicitly represented on the BCCAT Council, whereas Vancouver University is not admitted to membership. We think both should be there and in other similar contexts - the unions overtly, rather than tucked away within public institutional representation, the bureaucracy, and at times the media, as is usually the style in BC postsecondary politics.

In the same context and era as above, a pathetic union-motivated action got the handful of (then all non-profit) private college Early Childhood Educator programs officially precluded from voting at the BC-wide ECE Articulation; and UVic's collateral program then denied course transfer credit to them, even though they are required by government to teach the same core courses and competencies (and at Vancouver University, additional ones are offered including at post-graduate level) as taught in public institution ECE programs. Is faculty competency the criteria? Well, of the ECE faculty listed in one BC public university college's 1999-2000 catalogue, 40% formerly taught at Vancouver University over the years - three of them as ECE program co-ordinators! Is the size of on-campus library an on-going criteria? Well, BCIT (in another discipline) downtown campus has no library whatsoever! Etc.

[In 1992, when New Summits became Vancouver University (and some community colleges became university colleges), UBC withdrew former reciprocal specific course-transfer. As later acknowledged to us (after his retirement) by a Universities (public only) Presidents' Council decision participant, the decision was quickly made prior to finding an official rationalization. The subsequent rationalization was that - since entire degrees would henceforth need to be reciprocally accepted for transfer - our small downtown library was deemed inadequate. We agreed our programs-specific library was relatively small, but - unlike then at UBC - all our students had the option of access to BBS electronic data bases, etc].

Another petty assault on Vancouver University struck in early Summer 1999, but largely petered out by Autumn. It was likely motivated by public sector irritation with the progress of former UBC president David Strangway in securing a campus donation commitment towards the establishment of his Squamish College (or whatever it will be called). We have our own dissatisfaction with Strangway - he for years ignored Vancouver University's pioneering work while puffed up as President of BC's Most Important University, but now runs around claiming he is establishing Canada's first independent university when he knows such is not the fact.

Irritated by Strangway, or for some other current political motivation, the BC public sector union members who ultimately determine which institutions are listed on the BC Open Learning/CLN and Federal HRDC post-secondary websites got Vancouver University and Trinity Western temporarily bumped (with no notice nor justification) from web directories in which they had formerly been long listed. Federal official Benoit Verreault (HRDC) and BC Open Learning official Cathy Van Soest each declined to identify which specific BC government ministerial section or office (or public-sector union activist?) instructed them to discriminate against Vancouver University. We sought (ad, Courier, 21 July 99 p. 4) pro bono legal counsel assistance for subpoenae in the matter - but with no response. Particularly irritating was the Federal website aspect, since formerly through two decades the Canadian Government had listed Vancouver University, along with TWU and the BC public institutions, in the National Guide to College and University Programmes . By the end of Summer 1999, however, the BC site reinstated us, after (reasonably) differentiating BC's two independent universities from its public universities. [Note, year 2000, bumped again - and we still await HRDC reverting to its former common sense]. We are also listed by - and appreciate - the official State of Washington and various other competent and respected directories. And our external degrees process ranks high on Altavista, AOL, Lycos, Yahoo, and other smart search engines and portals of the "electronic web" - which we were the first to name and detail back in 1971.

Again stated, the negative bias against native BC independent programs has no significant pedagogic foundation - it is mostly just dominant public sector competetive positioning and bullying. While discouraging independent non-profits, it has in effect encouraged the import of satellite (e.g., American Montessori Society affiliate MTEC) programs by hosts such as "Century" [ not Whetham] College. Another pathetic example of BC's self-defeating policies was rejection by the TQS and Independent Schools Branch of Vancouver University's [Montesssori-inspired - and note there are six BC public school districts with Montessori programs] then proposed M.Ed program, thus virtually inviting the Adler Institute (Chicago), City University (WA), Phoenix (AZ), University of Houston-Victoria (TX), and others to subsequently parachutte programs into Vancouver. Some of the flood of satellite programs - including the universities of Houston, Missouri, Oregon, Phoenix, Portland - register in their own name with the PPSEC. Others are registered and retailed indirectly. [And one proprietary degree program was sloppily referred by the PPSEC to the BC corporate registry as a BC-authorized degree institution, whereas in fact it slipped in from easy-degrees Wyoming].

These branch-plant operations now provide employment to locals, who thus have a stake in preserving and expanding the evolved but inequitable status quo. The end result is that not only do misguided public-sector unionists criticize Vancouver University (because it is independent) - but so also do the local employees of competing imported programs.

The latter make much to-do about the "accreditation" their employer brings to BC, or secures from the PPSEC. The fact is, however, that often the US accrediting agencies do not know that these branch plant programs are advertized as "accredited" by them - and thus no cyclical external evaluation visit is made. (This matter was raised by us with the CEOs of the US regional accrediting agencies and others attending a WCET AGM in Portland, November 1999). The boast of exported-to-BC "US accreditation" is sometimes just a mirror. The accreditation may be really confined to the institution's main campus in the USA. Further in this general context, it should be emphasized that the BC PPSEC does not have an extensive range of staff and expertise to comprehensively (i.e., discipline-specific) evaluate the spectrum of trades, technical, academic and professional programs which it theoretically now "accredits". It is making a stab at it, but to do the job properly it would have to hire almost as wide a range of staff competencies as all of the externally-headquartered accrediting agencies put together. It would also have to be very careful indeed about the composition of discipline-specific advisory committees in some subjects - such as Montessori pedagogy, due to the manner in which highly-competitive franchise organizations in that and some other disciplines claim major distinctions about what are factually trivial differentiations.

One Education Ministry branch (Independent Schools) currently suggests that Vancouver University's teacher education program undergo cyclical evaluation by BC government (or possibly government-contracted?) evaluators, as is the case - they say - with public programs. Contradictorily, however, the same ministry completely declines to make the process available to Vancouver University (and TWU et al). [Private ECE programs used to be site-evaluated like their public institution counterparts, but that was abandoned as a budget measure years ago. Governments spend billions on corporate support programs - but ECE is just child's play, is it not?]. IS alternatively suggests we go to some specifically named BC-external "accreditors" - who either already have what are essentially franchise affiliates in BC (AMI, AMS, and now-defunct StN) or - in the one other suggested sub-category - is primarily a US entity (MACTE) largely focussed on the particularities of US Dept of Education student loan requirements. The fact that BC and other public schoolboards with Montessori programs, and the Canadian Montessori teachers organization (CAMTE), both warmly accept our graduates is conveniently disregarded. The current (late 1999) IS stand-off is that when one of our graduates secures a transcript from an American accredited university or college (with or without studying at that institution), acknowledging transfer credit standing for our courses, those course credits are then accepted for BC IS teaching certification. But the courses are misleadingly identified in IS documentation as if they were those of the fraternally-recognizing institution, rather than of Vancouver University. Thus on BC IS Teacher Certification 99/0191, courses actually taught at Vancouver University are falsely identified as Pacific Oaks College courses. This is an example of the convoluted hypocrisy and double-standards used by the BC bureaucracy and some public institutions to deny rightful outcome to Vancouver University's lawful existence and its integrity of programs. Vancouver University is not a branch or affiliate of Pacific Oaks. Pacific Oaks - and others similar - simply recognize Vancouver University's courses objectively and in collegial friendship. BC's problem is ideological- and market-driven animosities.

Throughout much of the Nineties, various usually-anonymous staff of the Education ministries and PPSEC frequently gave callers misleading information about the status of Vancouver University - its Whetham College (1893), BC Montessori Teachers College, etc - including to then Minister of Education Moe Sihota in l996 and the Ministry of Health in 1998. The latter misinformation resulted in staff of the Ministry of Health dropping VU-BCMTC from the 1998 edition of the infrequently-published but widely distributed official catalogue of BC EC Educator programs, with substantial detrimental consequence in terms of inter-institutional and inter-agency networking, student recruitment, etc. Although the Ministry of Health subsequently acknowledged that VU-BCMTC is in fact an authorized BC ECE program - no apology was issued and no compensation or remedial action offered. And despite two years of protest, the ECE directory now lists us with misleading statement to the effect that we only conduct courses on contract with schools. Such is the way the nasty little game has been played in British Columbia - to the ultimate detriment of needy students and families. [We tried to get Sihota into provincial court (Vcr 97-34899) as a witness in the context, but the AG Ministry objected on grounds of ministerial privilege; and Southam's lawyer - fearing compensation to Vancouver University for collateral damage - incredibly supported the AG's position! ].

A substantial donation would enable Vancouver University to address many of the above issues, by way of judicial review.

Further to all the foregoing, see also three propositions in another document on this site.

>*<None of the above should be construed as an objection to branch campuses being located in various jurisdictions, nor to transnational franchises, consortia, etc. Vancouver University has had programmatic and other presence in Washington State for three decades (and its Whetham College, as legal entity, relocated from BC to WA from 1894 until returning to Vancouver many years later). Vancouver University Worldwide itself welcomes affiliates and collaborating institutes globally. The problem in BC, however, is that while the public sector unions can do very little to exclude imports, they punitively vent their competitive "turf protection" frustrations on domestic BC independent institutions, particularly Vancouver University. Additionally, with respect to Vancouver University, they try to subvert academic integrity and intellectual freedom by blocking its membership in such organizations as AUCC and CONOHEC. Vancouver University also objects to trans-border inconsistencies, such as American programs operating in Canada and loudly proclaiming their national or US regional or similar "accreditation" - while the accrediting body they use for marketing purpose declines to accredit by-them-questionably-defined "outsiders". [E.g., Vancouver and Antioch universities have both additionally functioned in WA for decades, but NASC declines to accredit on the ground they are BC and Ohio entities]. See further about our situation.

In late 2000, in BC pre-election context, another ideologically-driven assault commenced against Vancouver University. In Spring 2001, the same people exported their campaign to bordering neighbours, and WAOL was pressured to cease its former mutual-linking collaboration with us. The 200l incoming BC government thus received the false message that we are a "problem" abroad - whereas it was the BC bureuacracy itself which fostered the problem, not our students or alumni in BC or abroad!