# Diversity in the US and Canadian university system


![](http://static.flickr.com/38/86505793_733b4e5d35_m.jpg)While
researching what would end up being a poorly written essay on
modernization theory and Laos (don’t ask), I came across the Journal of
Higher Education, a topic that interests me verily, and I read a few
articles. One that stood out was a comparison between the US and
Canadian university systems in terms of stratification and competition
between undergraduate students. (The article was Davis, S. & Hammack, F.
M. (2005). The Channeling of Student Competition in Higher Education:
Comparing Canada and the U.S. *Journal of Higher Education*, 76, 1, pp.
89-106. You can probably get it online through your university library,
if you have one).

They start by stating that since enrollment in post-secondary education
has risen dramatically in the last few years (around 60% of secondary
school leavers in both countries visit some sort of post-secondary
institution), the competition among undergraduates to attend the most
prestigious program/institution has grown, but it manifests itself
differently in the two countries. In the US, you have several thousand
institutions, private and public, small and large; and there is a very
clear hierarchy of the best schools, which is quite stable. If you
compare today’s top-ten list with the one a hundred years ago, you will
find only one change. These schools often charge very high tuition fees,
but give grants and scholarships to attract the best students. Since it
would be incongruent to have a very weak medical school at for example
Harvard, these institutions try to maintain top quality across the
board, and they do not charge significantly more or less for the
different programs.

On the other hand you have Canada, with schools almost all public, and
without clear perception of better and worse universities, at least for
undergraduate. Partly because most students go to the closest university
(which is true; at UofT we are constantly told about how excellent our
university is, but most of the students I know grew up in Scarborough,
not many people who travelled from BC or the Prairies to go to school
here). The tuition fees across institutions is also quite similar, and
regulated. However, the institutions are permitted to charge more (often
quite a lot more) for certain programs, such as computer science,
management and engineering. This has led these institutions to become
highly sought after. The difference with the US is thus that in the US,
which institution you attended is paramount, whereas in Canada, it’s
which program you graduated from. In fact, people attending good
institutions that fail to enroll in their program of choice might
drop-out, and choose to do the same program in community college
instead, something one would not see very often in the US.

Finally, they posit that because most of the best students from Canada
go on to British and US elite institutions, this has functioned as a
“safety valve” to the demand of setting up more elite institutions in
Canada.

This whole discussion was valuable to me, because in Norway we also have
universities that are very roughly “equal”; all funded 100% by the state
(no tuition money), very centrally run, and if you want to study history
it depends more on which city you want to live in. And although we don’t
differentiate the tuition fee, if you want to study history as an
undergraduate you are almost guaranteed admittance, but if you want to
study journalism, law or medicine, it’s incredibly hard.

Stian\
 (picture by [Roobee](http://flickr.com/photos/roba))