Excellence and Access for Ontario’s Higher Education System: How Universities Commit to Both

Abstract

This thesis describes two phases that together investigate how the 20 Ontario universities commit to the values of widening participation and academic excellence, which are often viewed as competing. This research employs theories and concepts at the intersection of sociology and politics of education, namely, maximally maintained inequality, effectively maintained inequality, isomorphism, and legitimacy to compare Ontario to international trends of social stratification and inequality within the higher education sector. Phase 1 provides a landscape analysis of Ontario’s higher education system and a classification of Ontario’s universities as recruiting or selecting. The universities were classified using three sources of data. The first was the entering grade-point averages across universities and programs from Common University Data Ontario (CUDO), the second was a discourse analysis of websites for five programs (Arts, Science, Business, Engineering, and Nursing) at each university, and third was Maclean’s (a Canadian current affairs magazine) rankings of university reputation. Phase 1 found that certain Ontario universities were distinctively selecting across most programs, while others were recruiting across most programs, and that the majority of Ontario universities had both selecting and recruiting programs. In phase 2, I conducted a discourse analysis of guiding documents (Strategic Mandate Agreements and Strategic Plans), and discourse analysis of publicly facing websites and viewbooks to explore how two of Ontario’s selecting universities and two recruiting universities commit to both widening participation and academic excellence. The findings reveal that Ontario’s selecting universities and programs prioritize being perceived as academically excellent (e.g., rigorous training, prestigious learning opportunities, leading innovation, and impact) on a global stage. Recruiting universities prioritize widening participation for local communities through strong recruiting and retention discourse and local community building through research. Recruiting and selecting universities use the discourse of academic excellence and widening participation to establish cognitive, moral, and pragmatic legitimacy. Selecting universities commit to widening participation to the extent that it does not challenge perceptions of global academic excellence. The findings of Phases 1 and 2 are relevant for policymakers, researchers, university leaders, and the public, as Ontario’s differentiated higher education system is not removed from the debate around equality of opportunity.