I was here in Prince George when Queen Elizabeth II opened the brand new UNBC campus; I heard no one predict that it would be close to the top of its field in Canada just two decades later. The smart money was mostly hoping that it would not share the fate of Notre Dame College in the Kootenays, which became the second degree-granting university charted by the province of British Columbia in 1963 only to close its doors 14 years later. Its successor, the David Thompson University, lasted only 7 years until 1984.
Twenty years after the Queen, UNBC is well established: it is firmly rooted in the communities it serves so well; it has achieved stellar national recognition in climbing to the number two spot among Canada's 19 primarily undergraduate universities; it has attracted talented students and faculty from across Canada and around the world. So what is the difference in Prince George at UNBC? Certainly community support was critical in getting the venture started, but there was huge community support for a university in the Kootenays as well. What is the crucial distinction here in Northern BC?
UNBC's secret sauce is not only the excellence and dedication of its staff and faculty; let's not kid ourselves, other primarily undergraduate universities like Mount St. Vincent, Lakehead, Bishop's, Winnipeg, Lethbridge, St. Francis Xavier also have excellent and dedicated faculty and staff, not to mention huge advantages in numbers of alumni, rich histories, and established reputations, but UNBC consistently outshines them. I'll be blunt, because neither the UNBC administration nor faculty association are acknowledging the single most important factor behind the stellar success of UNBC in its first couple of decades.
UNBC faculty have consistently placed their own best interests far below the interests of their students, those of UNBC as an institution, and those of Northern BC communities. This is the key factor that has enabled UNBC to achieve such outstanding results. No one else made these sacrifices: the students did not pay extra tuition, the CUPE staff did not allow their compensation to fall far behind their colleagues at other places, the administrators did not give up any of their perks or travel budgets, Prince George residents didn't cut municipal services or put any special levy on their taxes. It is the faculty that bit the bullet; it is the faculty who took the hit for the greater good. It is bloody well time we said thank you.
It is interesting to compare and contrast the UNBC experience with that of Nipissing University. Nipissing got its charter in 1992, UNBC did in 1990. Nipissing is in North Bay Ontario, a resource dependent town not much smaller that Prince George. A three bedroom home in a nice North Bay neighborhood costs about the same that it does in Prince George. Nipissing is ranked 19th out of 19 primarily undergraduate universities in Canada but full professor at UNBC is paid 17 per cent less than one at Nipissing.
I don't imagine that the lost ground in faculty compensation will be made up soon, but faculty at UNBC do deserve two things: a good faith offer from the university administration, and the gratitude of our communities in Northern BC for the price that they have paid.
Peter Thompson
Prince George
