Some of Ontario’s colleges and universities are better than others, a painful truth that has never before been expressed by the government of the day. They must diet, de-clutter and make friends, and do it in haste or the government will do it for them.

That’s it. Working late into the night, my candle long melted, I have finally found the plain language to translate an incendiary Ontario higher education report written in such thick jargon that it will be incomprehensible to everyone except alert management and unions.

I’m sure they are seething, which is funny because whichever Ministry of Training, Colleges and Universities committee wrote the report was itself clearly in a state of terror. That’s why the title is the meaningless “Ontario’s Proposed Differentiation Policy Framework: Draft Discussion Paper” rather than “Shaping Up: Why You Should.”

Queen’s Park does not want to anger sensitive people who run the hugely expensive post-secondary education sector. But money is short after the province, as it admits, increased operating grants by 80 per cent since 2002-03.

Ontario has 20 universities and 20 colleges teaching 760,731 students (in 2010-11). With schools seeing cost inflation of 5 per cent to 8 per cent a year and operating grants rising only 1.1 per cent, as the paper says, something has to give. Ontario may no longer be able to afford lavish menus of courses at each institution.

Everyone has been encouraged to enter higher education, even those who were dragged through high school by their ears. Polytechs and colleges suddenly became universities, or began to teach the same subjects out of rivalry. Standards sank, credits weren’t transferable, both teaching and research were unreasonably demanded of all professors, professors were no longer required to have PhDs, underpaid sessional instructors did the teaching, the deletion of Grade 13 meant students were unprepared and tuition fees shot up.

For example, Ryerson is teaching philosophy, the University of Toronto Scarborough has joined with Centennial College to teach journalism, none is doing what they do best, and students are confused. (Personal bias declared: I attended both U of T and Ryerson.)

So Queen’s Park has tiptoed in with a book of helpful hints. Schools must “differentiate,” meaning they must decide on what they do best and stick to that. They must make it easier for students to transfer credits, decide what they can afford to teach, and face performance reviews. They must make some decision about research vs. teaching but this is hedged.

Queen’s Park is asking for feedback in the nicest possible way — “a careful balancing act between government stewardship and institutional leadership” — but it wants it quickly, by Oct. 11, so that “Strategic Mandate Agreement Submissions” can go to the ministry by November.

At the same time, Queen’s Park is quietly working on another project, bringing MOOCS — massive open online courses — to Ontario, which is the grenade in the room. They haven’t pulled the pin yet. They will.

But the most important message being sent out here is this: you are not all great at everything you do. This is new. The best case-study analogy I can make about the non-judgmental fetish is a company called Eileen Fisher, a cult designer of clothes for older women that was profiled by Janet Malcolm in this week’s New Yorker.

Eileen Fisher produces clothing for women who want to disappear. It is austere, elegant, eternal, black/grey, roomy if you need the room, draped rather than flappy, interchangeable, clothing that works hard at going unnoticed. It is clothing for the woman who complains that she is no longer noticed and decides to just go with that. In effect, Eileen Fisher designs a line of identical garments for the self-contained.

No one is in charge of the company, as such. Fisher is a modest person who was, as she says, raised in the “no one’s looking at you” mode. Her CEO says she likes “a very caring, feminine style of leadership that values . . . co-operation rather than competition.” Meetings take place in a circle. They begin and end with a special bell being rung. A gilded gourd is passed from hand to hand.

What interests me is that Ontario education seems to have grown — or ballooned — in the Eileen Fisher model. All degrees are equal, all professors can teach equally well, all subjects lend themselves to research, almost all students are welcome.

But this is manifestly not true, the “B.A.-lite” degree knitwear having become a thing. (With a MOOC, you can knit your B.A. at home.) The flashy and outstanding B.A. is rare. I have seen the lite with my own eyes, meeting fourth-year students who have never read a book outside class. It seems unreal and it is too late to mark them down, but one wonders about the overgenerous educational structure that produced such students.

Ontario is clearly wondering too. I understand the caution in this meek report but note that there is a hard core to it as well. It’s called “metrics,” another jargon word, but it says that a university’s success or failure is measurable one way or another. What’s strange is that institutions are finally being measured in an era where students are measured so poorly, with an excess of kindness.

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There is a hierarchy of universities and colleges, not a circle trading gourds. What Ontario is shyly suggesting is elitism. Good for them. But I don’t blame them for being scared to say it out loud.