A message from Provost and VP Academic Eric Davis:
The 2014 Education Plan Update states that the provincial government’s B.C.’s Skills for Jobs Blueprint: Re-engineering Education and Training “has occasioned much debate over the wisdom or folly of a sharp turn from ‘liberal’ to ‘applied’ education. For UFV, the real folly would be accepting the terms of this debate. There is no inherent dichotomy between a liberal and applied education.”
The Provost’s Forum on Skills and Liberal Education will engage with this debate, not on terms set by others, but on terms that make sense to UFV and its students.
Provost’s forum
Wed, Oct 15
10-11:30 am
Abby B140
We know what our purpose and goals are. They are outlined in our Strategic Directions Statement; our Education, Research, and Strategic Enrolment Management plans; and our Institutional Learning Outcomes.
We also know the goal of government; they have directed us over the next four years to target 25% of our ever-diminishing grant to programs that produce graduates for “high demand occupations.”
And we also know that the majority of students come to university to prepare themselves for a job or career and that they and their families expect employment and career success to be the return on their considerable investment in post-secondary education.
These are the expectations of the public, of employers, of our funders.
- How do we, as a teaching and regionally-focussed university, position ourselves in this landscape?
- What is government trying to achieve and how do our plans and our mission intersect with this goal?
- What does educating citizens, liberal education’s traditional purpose, mean for working, debt-burdened, non-traditional students—a growing majority?
- How do we reconcile education for work and the private goods employees and employers earn with education of public-minded, ethical citizens—education for participation in the public sphere?
The forum will address these and other questions through a panel presentation, break-out discussions, and a general discussion and questions for the panelists. Besides the questions listed above, panelists — representatives of various careers, including graduates of UFV — will be asked to answer the following question: How did your post-secondary education prepare you for your career and where you are today?
Please attend and engage in a robust discussion of our institutional purpose and direction and the ways in which we can realize our collective vision and plans in a moment of unique challenges and opportunities.
Read more about the changes to the Education Plan (and the new Strategic Enrolment Management Plan) here.
Dr. Eric Davis