Equitable access to the Canadian university and quality

Explores the relationship between quality and equitable access to post secondary education (PSE) in Canada. The paper begins by outlining some of the rhetorical issues associated with defining "quality" and "access." The problem of defining quality is provisionally dealt with here by exploring the slipperiness of the term with a view to unpacking the interests that define quality, and ultimately, a conclusion that we might best calibrate the term "quality" by examining the degree of correspondence between what a university claims it will provide, (and this within the mandate of a publicly funded institution) and evidence at the individual and systemic level of its constituents' having achieved or surpassed the criteria implied by the claims. In other words, PSE quality needs to be thought of as the degree to which the relationship between a university, its students, and its culture works to increase civil, political, and economic participation of a national, and in Canada's case, an increasingly international citizenry. Further, as one of the most fundamental tools by which an ostensibly democratic culture reproduces itself, it seems clear that meaningful efforts to enlist a greater population of diversely defined students, whether in terms or class or race or any other marginalization, should count as a significant criterion of excellence.