Upstart Cornwall

The University of Cornwall

People often try and suggest that if a University was here all of our economic problems would go away. Better education = better jobs = more money in the economy. I’m simplifying - but am not far off from the mainstream thought on this.
I have to say that I disagree that a University would help. At least not in the next 10 to 15 years. I have sat on a university Board of Directors (Bishop’s) and have seen how difficult it is to continue to exist, let alone start from scratch in today’s competitive education marketplace. I have no objection to a university setting up shop here - I just don’t think it is as easy as people suggest. I would much rather see the community focus on promoting St. Lawrence College as a top notch school that it can be, or already is.
Two school’s (La Cite Collegiale and the University of Ottawa) have tried to setup campuses here in my lifetime and they failed for various reasons. Ask anyone and you’ll get a different reason each time. But - they failed and there is a reason for it. I know some Universities (Guelph) run Entrepreneurship courses here and such - but that doesn’t really count does it?

I always thought Nav Canada would make a great campus for a small private University. One that focused on environmental studies or a very targeted niche. It is the perfect location, its ready to use and has lots of dorms already built - oh, and quite a nice pub. Perhaps if Nav Canada continues to move their good jobs out of town and shuts down, the silver lining will be a “Turnkey” University ready to go. I don’t see that happening though.
Until then, we better start promoting St. Lawrence College a bit more because The University of Cornwall is a long way away.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, April 1st, 2008 at 9:35 pm and is filed under Blog. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

4 Responses to “The University of Cornwall”

1. Alex Says:
   April 1st, 2008 at 10:06 pm

   Greetings and thank-you for your blog! I heard from a friend today that a university was to be contructed within the next two years once Domtar has been cleared from its site. I was curious as to whom you credit you information to?

2. Jason Says:
   April 2nd, 2008 at 9:54 am

   Eric,

   Interesting post. I once thought building a University here would help too.

   I still think the challenge is not to build a university but to have ACCESS to University programs and degrees. Correct me if I am wrong, but I think uOttawa only offered a limited number of courses at the Cornwall campus — ie: psychology. And if memory serves me right, you weren’t able to complete your degree in Cornwall — I believe only the first 2 years could be finished here in town, but I may be misinformed. That poses a challenge

   Education is indeed competive. However; I think a small city like Cornwall could use that competitiveness to its advantage. Think outside the box like this:

   1. If the education market is competive, would top notch universities not want to expand their reach, while not necessarily having to build the massive infrastructure (classes, dorms, sport facilities,ect)in order to have and edge over other top notch schools?

   With the present amount of technology, I don’t see why they would not want to set-up satellite campuses that would comprise of an auditorium with video conferencing capabilities. Student could attend classes the same as those attending classes in Ottawa, and with the use of two way video/audio conferencing student would able to participate in class discussions and debates.

   Would the system need some fine tuning, new systems to organize, collaborate, and delegate schedules, homework, assignments — absolutely. But that is the challenge, that is why we pay out city officials 100k+ a year….to think up solutions to these challenges and get the ball rolling in the right direction.

   These are the questions and challenges I want our city council, our city’s econ dept, and other departments to work on.

   Stop saying Cornwall is a retirement town — it’s not! But it can become one by default if we don’t make the necessary changes.

3. Eric Bergeron Says:
   April 3rd, 2008 at 11:35 am

   Hi Alex,
   I don’t credit anyone with my information. I have not heard about a University going up on the Domtar site - although I would love to see it. I heard it was going to be more about Condos, parks and some retail locations. I think part of the lot was looked at for the multi-pad arena (the parking lot north of Second street).

4. Jason Says:
   April 4th, 2008 at 12:08 pm

   I will be honest with you Eric, I think higher education in Cornwall is a great idea, however the problem is keeping those with the higher education in Cornwall.

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