It’s an arms race. Just as resource companies try to get the jump on each other and oil-producing countries play competitive games, our universities are locked in a deadly serious struggle.
They’re trying to extract that sweetest of sweet crude from Canada’s energy sector – new funding for research. And they need it.
The days when professors could rely on the federal and provincial governments for all of their research money are over. The Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) said in August 2004 that it faces “a very serious budget challenge.”
In an article on its home page, the council, which is the major granting agency for science and engineering, said that “NSERC needs a significant budget increase in 2004-05, and further increases to follow as driven by demand. Our best estimate of immediate need is for an increase of 13 per cent.” That’s about $80 million per year – not exactly pocket change.
Without it, deserving professors won’t get the grants they need and deserve.
To fill the gap, professors, faculties and universities are looking to the resource sector.
At a time when the high-tech industry is still dazed and confused, you can’t exactly expect someone like Nortel to pony up much cash. The biotechnology folks seem to be finding their legs, but most of those companies need every penny for themselves.
Only the resource sector, basking in $50-per-barrel oil and soaring gas prices, has the muscle to help out academia in a big way. So the requests come often and they come big.
The University of Calgary struck a deal in 2003 to acquire 170,000 sq. ft. in the under-utilized Imperial Oil Research Centre building, just off the main campus. It now houses the university’s Research Transition Facility, an incubator for emerging research-based companies. There’s also a nice rent-paying tenant in there, Calgary Laboratory Services.
The U of C also scored $1 million in funding from the Imperial Oil Charitable Foundation in 2001 to boost teaching resources in the faculty of education. That company saw the benefit of helping train teachers who can educate future oilpatch employees.
Those initiatives are dwarfed by the recent announcement of a $10-million gift to the University of Alberta’s engineering school, also from Imperial Oil.
The donation, to set up a new oilsands research centre, will serve Imperial’s needs for better oilsands technologies and the desires of university profs and researchers to do research on this.
And, in what may be the biggest enchilada of all, three Alberta universities are trying to snag $60 million in funding for the PanAlberta-Canada Energy and Environment Research Initiative (PACEER).
It would see the U of A specialize in oilsands and the U of C take coalbed methane, regulation and enhanced oil and gas recovery, while the University of Lethbridge would handle water resources. No word yet on whether the province will come up with some cash for this, but hopes are high.
There’s little question that Alberta universities should be engaging in relevant research, and what could be more spot-on than energy industry issues? But there’s a nagging concern for the people who would rather study the philosophy of Kant, the mathematics of n-dimensional manifolds or – heaven forbid – the thoughts of Karl Marx and Chairman Mao.
Where do they fit in this world of targeted big-bucks research? Well, they do have the conventional granting councils, impoverished though they are. And actually, with a small twist, some of these disciplines can do quite well in the “new paradigm” of research funding.
For example, I’m told that professors who specialize in business ethics are among the hottest on the job market now. Any philosopher worth his salt can probably teach ethics to business types. But should he or she have to morph into what the market demands? Let’s hope not.
The main currency around a university is bodies, whether it be professors, grad students, technicians or even undergraduate students. If university resources gradually shift to the needs of the oil and gas industry, we might find ourselves with lots of engineers and accountants, but no poets and protesters. No soul.
I’m not saying that this is happening yet. The U of C made much of the recent arrival of prize-winning Toronto poet Christian Bök, who’s been called “one of the country’s most coveted and controversial sound poets.” The U of A has just launched what is planned to be Canada’s second- largest-ever fund-raising campaign, at $310 million. Presumably some of that will go to the poets and planners and playwrights.
And yes, at least two of the five co-chairs of this campaign are from “the ‘patch.” Imperial’s chairman, president and CEO Tim Hearn and former Petro-Canada president/CEO James Stanford are leading the charge. Like bankrobber Willie Sutton, fund-raisers go where the money is. In the Alberta of 2004, that means the oil and gas industry.
Let’s hope they don’t get tired of helping out.
Web watch:
www.nserc.ca/about/initiatives/initiatives_article1_e.htm
www.ucalgary.ca/rtf www.uofaweb.ualberta.ca/ campaign
(Tom Keenan is a professor at the University of Calgary and an expert on technology and its social implications. He can be reached at keenan@businessedge.ca)
