By Darren Smith, Weekend Contributor
A controversy has erupted in academic and student circles over the University of British Columbia’s Vantage College. The college’s campus is under construction and expected to cost the university C$ 127 million but is beginning its enrollment
Canadian Citizens are prohibited from enrolling at Vantage College. The college is marketed toward wealthy foreign students mostly from China. Tuition and living expenses are stated to be over fifty thousand dollars per year for the privilege of attending Vantage. The university offers higher perks to these students than what is afforded the university’s common students.
Student groups are calling the approach of UBC as elitist and creating a privileged class that is against the core values of a society of equal individuals. It is especially disagreeable in that at the time, ordinary students are facing a housing shortage of five thousand students, a twenty percent increase in rent, and a waiting list. When completed Vantage College will offer these international students a thousand room housing tower having amenities not made available to common students.
Creating such a college catering to the wealthy and not permitting ordinary citizens to enroll based upon their citizenship raises some doubts to what the true mission of a public university should be. The preferences universities give to foreign students who typically bring in high tuition fees has been controversial for decades but Vantage College rises to an even higher level of preference state universities are giving to foreign students who are more economically valuable.
The college offers services individually tailored to these students and includes perks such as “round the clock support”, “custom curriculum”, and “lower class sizes.” in a new campus constructed for the exclusive use of these students.
The Canadian Federation of Students in an interview with CBC News states that the practice of trying to make up for revenue shortfalls by creating an elite college for wealthy students is backwards thinking.
Spokesman Zachary Crispin said: “Vantage College is one instance of where the funding priorities are wrong and what we need to be doing is looking at where we’re failing current and existing students and Canadians who are in the system right now.”
Students also worried of creating an elite class of students, not fully integrated with other students.
“It really is a big worry that they’re not going to be fully integrated and they’re going to be separate and continue to be friends with each other, but maybe not the wider community,” said Alma Mater Society vice-president Anne Kessler.
“I think there’s kind of a sense that, what are these students doing here? Are they really going to be integrated into campus? Are they getting better services?”
UBC claims the university is building Vantage College to better support students having English as a second language but admits that it is seeking a greater source of revenue.
UBC Associate Vice President of Enrollment Angela Redish claims Vantage College will help alleviate financial pressures experienced by the university. “UBC is facing financial pressures as are public institutions across the continent, maybe across the globe, and this is one of the ways are trying to deal with that,” she said.
But, many students are upset with the decision to devote considerable money into what is expected to be a highly profitable venture while at the same time common students are neglected.
UBC student Aspen Dirk was less circumspect in voicing her view of the university’s approach: “It’s very disrespectful, and a bit of a slap to the face. UBC is becoming more and more an elitist school. The poor need not apply.”
By Darren Smith
Sources:
CBC News
Vantage College Website
The views expressed in this posting are the author’s alone and not those of the blog, the host, or other weekend bloggers. As an open forum, weekend bloggers post independently without pre-approval or review. Content and any displays or art are solely their decision and responsibility.
What if they had a school in Canada that had a sports team which played MaJong and competed with other schools in that league? And what if they cut the ma jong players a whole lotta slack on academics and let them major in Canadian British Studies or some such claptrap major and did not require them to really attend classes or even pass any tests? Then they would be in the same league as state universities in North Carolina. Only the sport would be basketball not ma jong. Or how about the rivalry between Penn State and Ohio State in sports which is so important that the pedophile perp was allowed to do his “Thing” with the kids” things?
Just think of it as a tax that foreigners pay that will help the Canadian Students. This is pretty creative.
(1) Funny, I was thinking as I read this, “This is well-written. Darren’s posts don’t have the typos and bad grammar that many other blogs often do.”
(2) (3) (4) Yep.
(5) Or, they reject you because you don’t speak Chinese or French.
(1) This post needs better editing.
(2) This college is clearly a profit center.
(3) As such, it will subsidize Canadian students at UBC.
(4) Thus, UBC is “finding a way to make uni more affordable to Canadians.”
(5) If you want to mix with *those students*, then walk over and join them for beers. If they reject you, then now you know why they didn’t enroll at UBC.
Stupid is as stupid does. It is in essence a privatization of the college within a public institution.
What a terrible idea.
And I agree that this college will have a terrible reputation in Canada.
johanssonmel,
Very good post!
As a venue for super-wealthy young people to hob-nob with other super-wealthy young people, they might be better off emulating the Harvard model where off-spring of the super-wealthy mix with those who are truly intelligent and meritorious – a win-win combination. Mentally dysfunctional super-wealthy minds mixing only with each other will have a much less successful outcome, and probably fewer generous endowments.
Don’t forget Refunds
If you choose not to attend UBC Vantage College after paying the deposit, $250 of your $500 deposit will be refunded if you notify the College before June 30, 2015.
The $100 deposit for subsequent sessions is non-refundable. If you do not plan to attend UBC Vantage College, please visit the Student Service Centre and select “Decline My Offer.”
Link to Fees & Finances
http://vantagecollege.ubc.ca/finances
A 2 year technical school might be better. Or something like Nanoscale Engineering at SUNY in Albany, NY.
http://www.sunycnse.com/Home.aspx
This plan suggests that the egalitarian part of the college system is running out of money. All socialist endeavors eventually do run out of money, then there are shortages; here it’s class availability, housing, and money to pay for the ‘affordable’ option.
But no one is allowed to say these things out loud, because it would make the narcissist liberals’ amygdalas scream in pain.
So they will blatantly grub after big money and simply pretend to themselves that they are not doing anything of the sort.
This is how the US Democrats can be some of the wealthiest people on the planet, but assuage themselves by believing the few nuggets they throw at the poor (e.g., minimum wage) make them ‘egalitarian’ in their own minds, even though those policies actually make the poor worse off than before.
That’s because they are damaged narcissists, and their thinking is broken.
Issac put forth one of the best comments on any topic on this blog in a long time. This is a fair and balanced view of things. I did not know about the influx of folks into Canada from China. Nor did I know about the politics in BC. Socialist systems married with free enterprise systems is a good way to describe it. Keep on commenting.
While maybe not done quite so overtly, the US has long had special considerations for those with greater financial resources. Should we be surprised that we are exporting some of our worst values?
When I was in Vancouver 4 years ago it did feel like being in China. Vancouver is a nice city w/ an international flavor. But, it is like SF in trying to be all things to all people. Much too permissive of heroin, panhandling and general debauchery. The drive from Vancouver to Whistler is beautiful.
I suspect that in the long run, not being admitted to this college will turn out to have been no disservice to Canadians. Colleges like this–with extravagant tuition designed to weed out all but the privileged classes–exist all over Latin America, and one thing that they have in common is that their academic programs are a joke.
Once a university begins limiting admission to high-paying students, what immediately follows is pressure on faculty to keep those students, and their revenue streams, for at least four years. If revenue is the fundamental raison d’etre of the institution to begin with, it will certainly continue to be–and academic standards, if indeed they ever existed, will fall very quickly by the wayside.
This is going to be a very high-priced diploma mill, and it won’t take employers and graduate schools long to figure that out.
As someone who enjoys dual nationality between Canada and the United States, having grown up and been educated in Canada, as well as the US, I can say with some knowledge that the Canadian system is far more egalitarian as well as affordable. However, the same mindless approach to issues exists in Canada as it does here in the US. Both the US and Canada are basically socialist systems married with free enterprise systems. From the socialist direction there are eras of advantage for all Canadians. When economics comes into play you find the same conservative mentality in Canada as is found in the US. The pendulum swings to both extremes. Luckily the conservative backward thinking extreme is weaker in Canada as is found in the US. This is an example of a mindless conservative swing in Canada.
There are underlying issues, however. Many years ago when the turnover from British to Chinese rule for Hong Kong was drawing near, many Hong Kong residents/citizens began moving to Canada and/or establishing residency and business connections. This was possible as Hong Kong and Canada shared agreements regarding immigration as they were both part of the British Commonwealth of Nations and territories. In the seventies and eighties massive endowments were presented to the community, especially the University of British Columbia, the alma matter of many Hong Kong businessmen and one of the preeminent universities of the world. One businessman gave $10,000,000 with the caveat that he not be named. Hundreds of millions if not billions of Hong Kong dollars flowed into Canada, especially Vancouver.
So, money talks and egalitarianism walks. However, throughout Canada and the western world can be found many private schools that cater to rich foreigners who want their children to have a better education than is available in their own country and to make connections with children of other countries. The University of the Pacific on Vancouver Island would not exist without foreign students and their parents’ money. St. Michaels school in Victoria, also would not exist. In the case of Vantage College, the perpetrators went just a little too far. If this would have happened in the eighties then the foreign parents would have been happy enough to fund a college that would base admittance on academic qualifications with an inside slide in for their kids.
At the moment BC is enjoying an extreme right wing government that tore up teachers’, nurses’, and other professions’ contracts reneging on agreements made by the previous governments. The present party has allowed strikes to go on over class size and the lowering of wages and other advances made by previous agreements. It is not only in the US, as we saw on Tuesday, that sometimes the pendulum swings too far to the right. Both strong countries, should be able to weather this. This is more an example of arrogance than one of reality. It has always been going on.
The only concept that comes to mind is “Holy Shit!” Really, all the rest is wasted. Wait until one of “them” does something against the law amongst the common man, whoa. (And you know it is coming)
oh man… these guys are going to regret this when the rest of Canada picks up on it…
Are they screening for “conservative students” or wealthy students?
“A chink in time saves nine” is what one of the Board members said on NPR. He did not know that he was throwing up a jaded cliche. Remulak intends to send some conehead students to this school. Money is no object. We are from France.
You find some of the most interesting pieces. This just seems so antithetical to the Canadians I know. But, US colleges are now starting to screen for conservative students.
Shouldn’t that be ADvantage College?