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We've, over the years at Mac, built a number of outstanding undergrad programs
One can think of the Arts & Science program, now 30 years old, the Bachelor of Health Sciences program which just celebrated ten, the new Integrated Science program
these are all remarkably successful experiments, and I think we have no doubt that what's on offer there is of high quality so
this is a point which I think we need to look at those experiments and say
they may be not be immediately translatable into programs in general because they require a certain level of resources that may not be available or
the circumstances are different and those particular experiments may not fit in every program.
It's a challenge that I think to translate, to look at something like Arts & Science and to say: What was the heart of its success?
What is at the heart of success? Is it emphasis on independent study? Is it emphasis on collaborative work? These kind of things
and then to look to other programs rather than thinking of simply replicating the Arts & Science program, think about translating it
into the terms of other programs so that we can offer something that has the same kind of benefit for students, but it might look a bit different in some of the other programs
When issues of quality come to public attention, quality of education in the universities
when these become the subject of discussion in Globe and Mail, editorials, and in articles in national newspapers
the universities sometimes view this as a problematic thing, as in some sense a critique that needs to be defended against...
and I have actually welcomed the recent emergence in the papers of this discussion about higher education because
first of all, it confirms the importance of higher education to the future prosperity of the country, and it does indicate that people do understand the significance of what we do
and I also think it's healthy for us to be prompted to think about quality in ways we typically don't
I think we take for granted that what we do is of high quality, and we proceed on that assumption, it's a fairly safe assumption at McMaster much of the time
but we certainly shouldn't assume that it's always the case