Noisemakers 2000: School's in

Patrick Woodsworth wants to save the CEGEP system

"I'm not the boss of the CEGEPs, I'm more the Chairman of the Board." So says Patrick Woodsworth, Director General of Dawson College, the largest of Quebec's 48 public CEGEPs, and president of the Conseil d'administration of the province-wide Federation des CEGEPs.

As the head spokesperson of the perennially underfunded CEGEP system, Woodsworth is surprisingly upbeat for someone facing an unsympathetic government and widespread dissension amongst faculty and students, both across the system and at Dawson itself. Despite this, Woodsworth has met with provincial education minister Francois Legault, requesting an immediate injection of $265 million into the CEGEP system, to be divvied up equally between all 48 colleges, and to go towards restoring cuts to the CEGEPs' fixed operating budgets.

"Because that only works out to about $300,000 per college, it's not that much for a school the size of Dawson, but it would mean a lot to a smaller school," Woodsworth says.

About $100 million of the requested funds is allocated to raising graduation rates, at a time when failure is at an alarming high. "Each college sets its own targets for graduation rates," he notes. "This information is made public and the colleges are accountable for it."

Part of the effort to raise graduation rates is the introduction of a program, Arts & Letters, replacing the current Creative Arts program. The intention of Arts & Letters is to be more tightly integrated, keeping students on a set path, something Woodsworth approves of: "I'm a big fan of the program approach, rather than saying let a thousand unrelated flowers bloom."

He makes it clear that his priorities are setting the CEGEP system back on a stable, well-funded path, and he is confident that the system has the dynamism to make this happen. Still, he is well aware of the mandate of the CEGEP system--to provide a transition from high school to university.

"Arts & Letters and Creative Arts are pre-U programs, so the question is how well do these programs prepare students for university. The purpose of Creative Arts is not to prepare students for the job market."

-- MICHAEL CITROME

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