British Columbia is nearing the end of a four‑month review of its public post‑secondary education system, focused on governance, program delivery, and financial sustainability. Yet the recent provincial budget makes clear that no new funding will accompany the review's recommendations. Institutions are expected to adapt on their own, despite operating in a system the review's own terms of reference acknowledge is poorly structured for rapid or large‑scale change.
This expectation exposes a deeper problem: the sector has limited experience with genuine systemic collaboration. Post‑secondary institutions have long prioritized competition, autonomy, and tradition over shared accountability and coordinated action. These dynamics make it difficult to imagine how meaningful transformation — rather than isolated incremental adjustments — will occur.
The strain is not evenly distributed. Smaller and rural teaching institutions face the most immediate risk, while larger, longer-established institutions are more insulated from financial pressure. Yet a sustainable system cannot be achieved by forcing only the most vulnerable institutions to change. If the sector is to remain productive and relevant, all institutions — including those with greater financial buffers — must participate in reform. The critical question is what those in stronger positions are willing to relinquish in service of the broader public good.
Thoughtful and creative attention to this crisis is emerging though. Across the sector, there is growing recognition that longstanding structures are no longer fit for purpose. Grassroots initiatives, such as collegial change models emerging at Queen's University (see Academic Change Mechanics), and public reflections by educators like Robin Mueller at Royal Roads University (see The Power of Speculative Futures in Creating Radically Re-imagined Universities) and researcher Dara Melnyk (see Beyond Policy: Innovative Universities as an Instrument of Higher Education Transformation), point toward new ways of imagining universities beyond entrenched bureaucratic constraints.
These efforts suggest that innovation is possible — but they also highlight the gap between isolated experimentation and system‑wide change. The challenge facing British Columbia's post‑secondary sector is not a lack of ideas. It is whether those ideas will be taken up broadly enough, and whether there is the courage and competency in sector leadership to produce the collective transformation the moment demands. It's that question of leadership that we will delve into in a future piece.