President's Address

REMARKS BY THE PRESIDENT (28 May 1982 - UA RG 285, Box 1, File 3)

Madam Chancellor, on this your first presiding over a Convocation at the Saint John Campus of the University of New Brunswick, may I extend to you warmest greetings and welcome on behalf of the students, faculty, and staff of UNBSJ.

Your appointment has been received with more than customary satisfaction. First, because having been awhile without the presence of a Chancellor on such occasions as this, we have come the more to feel the need. Second, because through your appointment a long and much valued link between the University and the Aitken family will be continued. third, because we know that you will bring to the Chancellorship a unique style and grace and interest.

The pay, Madam Chancellor, not to put too fine a point on it, is lousy; the duties are distressingly vague; the chances of advancement are nil. The currency of reward is not redeemable at any of the chartered banks on either side of the Atlantic: it is the regard, esteem, affection, the hospitality and support that we now pledge to you and which we hope will be sufficient to your enjoyment of your Chancellorial duties among us.

Madam Chancellor, I am pleased to report that the University of New Brunswick while, like universities everywhere, going through a period of financial retrenchment in which many difficult adjustments are being made, is nevertheless carrying out its manifold mission with commendable ingenuity and commitment. Valuable scholarship and research continue - scholarship and research aimed at improving the quality, efficiency, or comfort of life; our students are being instructed and encouraged to develop their diverse talents and interests; the needs of our province and nation are being assessed and addressed in ways too numerous and complex to describe here.

Madam Chancellor, you have entered upon your new role at a time when universities everywhere are having to justify themselves (or, more precisely, their costs) to an extent unparalleled in this century. In Great Britain and the United States this had led to retrenchments and redundancies that, as you know, have caused many Vice-Chancellors to warn of imminent catastrophe for their institutions. In Canada, while nothing so Draconian has yet happened, recent funding levels for universities have been such as to exact a toll on programs, services, and morale. This University too is having to contemplate retrenchments that would have been almost unthinkable a couple or so years ago.

It would be churlish and unjustified for me to use this occasion to criticize governments - federal or provincial - for a failure adequately to support the University of New Brunswick. Indeed, given the distressing economic realities of the moment, both levels of government are demonstrating a commitment to post-secondary education which deserves just acknowledgement and credit. Deserving too, however, of greater appreciation are the difficulties that universities face in carrying out the many duties expected of them and in making the often costly adjustments to meet the requirements or governments, the marketplace, and society in general. Monies spent on universities are not like monies spent on social services - important as those services are.

In both a pragmatic and a cultural sense universities are a national and renewable resource. In areas of research and development, as well as in the training of highly qualified professionals, universities are engaged in capital development of the economy and the nation. In times of economic difficulties we need that investment more than ever. As John Fraser wrote last week in his column in the Globe and Mail: 'In diminishing the university's broad scope of inquiry and research ... we are also diminishing the nation's ability not only to cope with the future but the current crisis as well.'

But there is another reason as well, a more traditional and fundamental reason, why a society should sustain its universities. For the individual a university education at its best produces enduring satisfaction and enlightenment - of knowing, reasoning, and creating - that need no other justification. If they did need further justification, it might be found in the disseminated effects of that satisfaction and enlightenment on society as a whole.

Last year the Government of Canada established an all-party Parliamentary Task Force on Federal-Provincial Fiscal Arrangements. After extensive hearings and research, the Task Force came down firmly on the side of increased public support for universities. More than that, the report eloquently reaffirmed the importance of universities to our national life. Speaking of post-secondary institutions in general, the report said: 'The enduring strength of a society ultimately rests more on these institutions than on economic, industrial, or military power. They are avenues along which people pursue knowledge of themselves, their values, their goals as individuals, their reasons for existence.'

Realistically, our governments cannot be expected to carry all of the load themselves. They too are experiencing the rigours of restraint. Support from the private and corporate sectors will also have to increase, as will tuition fees, if universities are to continue to fulfill the expectations our society has of them. UNB will be doing its best during the next year to gain such support as it launches a national fund-raising campaign. We are conscious that this is not the best time to launch such an appeal. But the same circumstances that make it difficult also make it necessary. The author of Ecclesiastes has written: 'He that observeth the wind shall not sow; and he that regardeth the cloud shall not reap.' We shall make our appeal in the strong conviction that we can demonstrate the unique value of the University of New Brunswick to the province, the Atlantic region, and to Canada.

And no better proof of the value and quality of what we do can be found than in the achievements of those men and women who will graduate today. To them, and to you, Madam Chancellor, all of us who teach and serve at UNB Saint John extend our warmest congratulations and best wishes for future happiness and success.