More professors needed to increase number of qualified engineers in Canada

The critical shortage of information and communications technologies (ICT) professionals is one step closer to being addressed as key stakeholders hammered out a plan to attack the growing problem. Last week, major players from the telecommunications community, including industry, government and academia, put the final touches on a draft framework that they hope will convince the federal government to allocate between $550 and $600 million over the next five years in its February budget. The group, which is officially calling itself eMPOWR Canada, is stepping up its lobbying efforts to convince the government that the single most important detriment to the Canada’s "new economy" is a critical shortage of highly qualified people (HQP). And the only way to increase the number of HQP is to significantly expand the number of teachers and professors in Canadian colleges and universities, which in turn increases the output capacity of the schools. It’s a serious issue for Canada’s ICT industries which need more HQP than academic institutions are able to produce. But without more qualified professors, colleges and universities are unable to boost the number of ICT graduates. And the situation is about to get worse according to Doug Barber, former CEO at Gennum Corp and now co-chair of eMPOWR Canada, which has launched a $500,000 campaign to convince the federal government to spend more on university and college ICT programs and professors over the next five years. "We not only have a real shortage of highly qualified people, but that is likely to get worse unless we do something about beefing up the supply of teachers," Barber told Report on Wireless. "In these kinds of areas, in the region of half of those teachers and professors are probably retiring over the next five to seven years." He says the dilemma for universities is simple. The ICT disciplines are expensive programs to operate and when the universities are under such tight financial constraints, the programs actually cost more money than they generate. "So they don’t have any incentive to beef up these programs or make sure they stay in place," he says. Industry executives also have reason to worry. Recently, the VPs of human resources at Cell-Loc Inc and Wi-LAN Inc, both of Calgary, told a representative of the eMPOWR group that their companies will die if they aren’t able to hire these types of highly qualified people. Creativity in recruiting can only go so far, they say. Government starts to hear the message from industry The message appears to be hitting its mark at the most senior political levels. In a September 14 speech to the Toronto Board of Trade, Finance minister Paul Martin suggests the government may have already been looking to earmark some money for the universities in the next federal budget. In the address, he outlined his vision of the new economy and made several references to "investing in people", describing them as Canada’s most valuable resource. "Investing in people means directing more resources to students and to the trade schools, colleges and universities they attend," he said. "Investing in people means graduate schools that attract the very best from around the world." He went on to say that "ours must be an economy that attracts talent like a magnet attracts metal; a society where our people feel that there is nowhere else they rather be than here, because there is no place they can achieve so much." But without increased financial support from the feds, eMPOWR project leader Jocelyn Ghent-Mallett warns, that will not happen. She says the lack of highly qualified people won’t change until more money is allocated to the universities to hire more professors, and to compensate them better. She refutes the over-hyped and over-used ‘brain drain’ message, saying the issue is really a capacity problem. Provincial programs in Ontario, Quebec and Alberta are already in place to "double the pipeline" of student spaces in universities. But for those students to be trained properly, more professors are needed to educate them. "The problem is that if (we) had enough capacity, then (we) could afford to let people go and not have to worry about it," she says. Canada should have enough capacity built into the education system here, so that if graduates want to explore opportunities in other parts of the world, it won’t affect industry within its own borders, Ghent-Mallettt adds. Broader approach key to get a better look from the feds This year’s proposal is an extension of a similar one that was put together by the microelectronics industry last year. During discussions with government officials, however, it was quickly realized that if there was any chance of getting money, the proposal had to encompass a much larger set of industries. This was when the microelectronics group aligned itself with the photonics, optoelectronics and related embedded software industries. Much like the microelectronics submission to the Finance committee last year, it says that for the industry to remain competitive, it needs to triple the number of professors in the country. Ghent-Mallett says that there are about 60 photonics professors in the country and that number needs to increase three-fold. In the wireless sector, she says the number needs to double. Key to eMPOWR’s proposal will be offering leading telecom researchers attractive compensation packages to head up engineering departments. The federal government’s Chairs of Research Excellence program, announced in the February budget, is a good start but Ghent-Mallett points out that the $200,000 being offered per chair isn’t high enough to attract high-profile "stars" from the U.S. and other countries. After the salary and benefits are paid and the university takes a portion for overhead, there isn’t much left for research and other costs, she says. "If you have this additional research money, you would be able to add it on to the (research chair funding) and therefore attract really high quality people," she says. "And once you start to attract stars, you get more and more good people." Reaching a consensus with the varied ICT industries has not been an easy exercise. The Canadian Institute of Telecommunications Research (CITR), a Network of Centres of Excellence, has been championing its own vision of how the government should be funding this area – a vision that takes a much broader view of the ICT sector than that proposed by eMPOWR. It appears that following last week’s meeting, the two sides have agreed to set aside their differences, at least for the time being. Having BCE Inc’s chief strategy officer, Peter Nicholson, straddling both proposals has undoubtedly helped bring the two camps closer together. Nicholson is co-chair of eMPOWR and chair of the CITR.

More professors needed to increase number of qualified engineers in Canada

News | 10/02/2000 4:00 am EDT

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