Research chairs program under review

The formulas for divvying up Canada Research Chairs among the biomedical, natural and social sciences, and among the nation's universities, will be put under an international microscope in a forthcoming review of the program.

No aspect of the roughly $300 million per year program will be exempt from scrutiny, says Canada Research Chairs Steering Committee Chairman and Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council President Chad Gaffield.

“There's absolutely no doubt about it. The world has changed, what's happening on our campuses has evolved, the development of graduate programs and so on. There's lots of changes on our campuses and my expectation would be that we'd start and go from A to Z in terms of all features of the program.”

Under the program, which was created in 1999, the available 2000 chairs were divvied up among 61 universities, using a distribution formula based on each institution's track record in obtaining grants from the nation's 3 granting councils. Chairs were awarded on 2 levels: Tier I, worth $200 000 per year for 7 years, and Tier II, worth $100 000 per year for 5 years. All chairs were renewable.

The program is officially slated to expire in 2010, although administrators hope its demonstrated worth will persuade the federal government to extend, or even expand, funding for at least another decade.

Gaffield says the chairs program is such a success that a number of countries, including Spain, South Africa, Australia, France and Finland have already moved with imitations. “My expectation will be the key question will be, not whether to just renew it, but how can we really use this foundation to really keep going in the years after 2010.”

Earlier, Gaffield argued that the program had positioned Canada as a global leader in many disciplines. It has also “revitalized university-based research in Canada,” he told a Mar. 27, 2008, gathering which brought together roughly 100 chair recipients in Gatineau, Quebec, for round table discussions on scientific developments that will revolutionize society and medicine over the coming decade.

The review of the chairs program will include evaluation by an independent, international peer panel, as well as a measure of consultation with the universities to ascertain whether they believe aspects of the program, including institutional allocations, should be changed.

Under the allocation system, the nation's 10 largest universities scooped up two-thirds of the chairs, while the biomedical and natural sciences each received 40% of the positions and the social sciences and humanities just 20%. In the interest of promoting more differentiation and specialization by universities, each was also required to situate their chairs within the context of an institutional strategic plan which sketched the disciplines in which it would specialize.

Over the course of the program's lifetime, various criticisms have been leveled to the effect that it was biased against women, that it encouraged faculty poaching by larger universities, and that it created elites within the academy, as well as “have” and “have not” disciplines.

Gaffield argues that such concerns have since been dispelled. “My sense is that the constant poaching that some people said would ensue has not happened,” he says. “Sure there is some movement but it has not become a problem and we have heard very little criticism of that now.”

Program administrators say that as of November 2007, 14.4% of all chairs were awarded to ex-patriots; 12% were awarded to recipients raided from other Canadian universities and 7% to recipients coming from outside a university. Nearly 22% of recipients came from outside the country and 58.5% of chairs were awarded to existing faculty within a university, while 22% of chairholders are women.

Gaffield also says there's absolutely no doubt that the program has resulted in significant specialization within the nation's universities.

“What we've all found on campus is that we want to have a strong foundation across our fields but clearly if we're going to make significant contributions to research, you really have to focus. You can't be internationally outstanding in everything. Even the biggest universities, and this is true whether it is Oxford or Harvard or the University of Toronto or any university, you're just not going to be internationally outstanding in everything.”