Whiz Kids Have No Fun

While most Ontario universities insist they exist mainly to improve the student's mind, to teach young people to think for themselves and to challenge conventional thought, there's not much of that airy-fairy stuff on the neat, orderly, efficient, cold, businesslike, somewhat overcrowded campus of the University of Waterloo.

At Waterloo, they say the hell with such an outdated educational philosophy, it's a tough, commercial world out there and kids have to learn to hustle if they want to make a buck in it. You don't have to be broadly intelligent to survive in this scary world, but you've got to learn to sell yourself. This is the philosophy of the University of Waterloo.

Consequently its campus is a go-go-go place where you pund the computer at 4 a.m. to catch up with your classes. And your classes are constant because the competition with other students is tough too. This is a "half the world will be out of work because of high technology in a few years time, but it's not going to be me" university and the stress and strain of it all shows.

There are constant classes but in another way the place is classless. There's none of the elitism of Queen's or the country-club atmosphere of Western.

Here, instead, there’s a fair bit of crass, a sprinkle of brash and a lot of drive and insecurity. The kids come from across the socio-economic spectrum, from working class to rich, from ancient Canadian and new immigrant families, the only common denominator being their brightness. Here you see lineups of kids in panty hose and three-piece suits (on the appropriate sexes), looking their best, waiting for job interviews with middle managers who are gods; kids who can talk computerese but are too busy to read a novel; who, in their spare time to go to classes on how to handle stress, conservative kids who are going to be commercial successes if it kills them. Waterloo is the university for Yuppies.

Me first

There's not much joy to all of this and there's not much spirit either on a campus where the first loyalty is to "me" and a hopefully prosperous future, rather than to a faculty, a fraternity, a class, a college or the university itself.

Only a small minority of students (about 800) belong to the four church-related colleges affiliated with the university and only a small percentage of students (about 4,000 of 25,000) live in residence. The rest commute from the local community or even the 50 miles (80 kilometers) from Toronto.

Still, the University of Waterloo is wildly successful at producing successes. Its campus is circled by little businesses started by students or graduates who combined computer science with entrepreneurship, both major disciplines at UW. Some of the little businesses have grown big and some of the graduates have grown rich. One of the more successful was started by second year dropouts. When their class graduated they employed the top two students.

This is a university like no other in that it was not founded by the provincial government, a church or other cultural institution, but by a group of industrialists and businessmen. It was the brainchild of people like Ira G. Needles, who was president of the B.F. Goodrich Co., J. G. (Gerry) Hagey, an advertising executive with Goodrich, and the late Carl A. Pollock, of Electrohome Ltd. They looked into the future and correctly decided that Canada would need a big supply of people with high technological skills in the coming decades. And they started an engineering school at Waterloo in July 1957 with 75 students.

Now, in less than 30 years, it is the third biggest university in Ontario and eighth biggest in Canada. Its maths faculty (over 3,500 students) is the world's biggest, beating a Soviet institution into second place. It also produces half of Canada's new English-speaking actuaries. Sales of computer software programs produced at Waterloo generate $2 million a year on royalties, more than Stanford University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) combined. It has more research contracts with industry than any other Canadian university. Its co-op program, in which students study for four months then work for the next four, gaining some money as well as experience, is the second-biggest co-op system in North America, only marginally behind North-eastern University in Boston, and it’s rapidly being copied by other universities across Canada.

More than half of UW's full-time students are enrolled in the co-op program and almost all of them get jobs with the help of 36 professional co-ordinators, who advise the students and act as a liaison between them and industry. Over 1,700 employers in every Canadian province and across the world participate in the plan, some using only one student at a time, but others up to 200. Most employers alternate students every four months, thus securing the equivalent of one full-time employee.

The system has many advantages. The students experience practical applications of their professorial lectures and they mature quickly with their experience in the workplace. They learn what sort of a job they want and what sort they don't want. They get a foot in the door of the workplace. And the businesses profit from new ideas and learn which students will be compatible with them after graduation.

There are also human disadvantages. The system gives Waterloo its nickname of "the suitcase university". Its students are constantly on the move, usually from a shared, rented house in Waterloo, perhaps home to Toronto at the weekends, then maybe off t[o] Alberta and another shared apartment or boarding house for the four-month work period. There's little chance of keeping friends.

"Dear John" letters are endemic. Loneliness is one of Waterloo' big lessons.

"We get to be experts on moving and I'm tired of it," said Laurie Law, 21, a chemical engineering student who is vice-president of the Engineers’ Society.

"We're being pushed really hard here," she added. "There's such a high calibre of student (admission to Waterloo usually require high school grades from the high 70s up to the 90s, with the average in the 80s). There's pressure on us all the time. I mean, we're expected to perform pretty well from day one to get one of the good co-op jobs. What's good about it is the sky's the limit. There are lots of jobs and a wide variety of them available. You learn an awful lot on the job and it's good to see the things you learn at lectures take meaning. We learn the attitudes of people all the way up in a company. We learn interpersonal skills. We become pretty realistic. I wouldn't trade my work terms for the opportunity to go to a university that has traditions."

"People recognize Waterloo as a very good school and we will be proud to have come from it," said Al McGowan, president of the Engineers' Society. "But there's not a lot of encouragement to really love it and not a lot of spare time to really think about it.”

This lack of university spirit shows in a student union vote of about 20 per cent and small attendances at most sporting events except basketball at which Waterloo excels. There have not been many social activities in the past, but the Student Federation, sensing the need, has recently built the biggest and probably the best equipped

student pub on any Canadian campus at a cost over $2 million. It's starting to bring students from all faculties together.

"This university has become so grounded in the philosophy of applying yourself and getting on and getting a job that it seems to downplay all other aspects," said George Eliott Clark, former editor of the campus newspaper, Imprint. "It doesn't teach you to be happy. It teaches you how to sell yourself. I'm not denigrating that, but it shouldn't happen to the detriment of the other things in life ... You're not taught to think and criticize. Only a minority of professors practice that sort of thing. Mostly it's a factory system. You're in and you're out."

This theme seems almost unanimous among Waterloo students but there are now obvious pressures within the university administration to alleviate it and make Waterloo at least a little like the others.

Toronto Star June 29th, 1985 - Jack Cahill