Outgoing University of Toronto President Meric Gertler plans to spend next year as an academic visitor at Oxford.Sammy Kogan/The Globe and Mail
In Meric Gertler’s 12 years as president of the University of Toronto, the school grew to more than 100,000 students and was consistently ranked among the world’s top 25 universities. But as he prepares to depart, he says it’s getting harder to compete with the best. Dr. Gertler reflected on his tenure in an interview at his office in Simcoe Hall.
Monday is his final day on the job. He plans to spend next year as an academic visitor at Oxford and then return to U of T as Goldring Chair in Canadian Studies.
The interview has been edited and condensed.
How did you find out you’d been chosen as president?
I remember getting a phone call from a search consultant. It was during reading week in 2013 and I was in Antigua. It was a wonderful surprise. I don’t recall any sort of splashy celebrations, but immediately I began to think about the enormity of the task ahead.
What did you hope to do?
There are two important jobs when you take on a role like this. First, make sure that when you hand the keys to your successor, the place is in better shape than when you found it. The second task is to help groom a successor. And Melanie Woodin, my successor, is someone who I was smart enough to appoint as dean of arts and science six years ago.
The world was a simpler place back then [in 2013]. Canada-U.S. relations were very strong. There was no hint that Russia was going to invade Crimea. Canada and China were good friends. So much has changed since and we’ve had to adapt.
The other thing that was true then, which is perhaps not quite as true now, is there was a strong national consensus around immigration being good for Canada and around international students being an asset to Canada. That, too, has changed in the last couple of years.
How has the university changed as the proportion of international students has grown, from about 15 per cent when you started to about 30 per cent today?
The proportion of international students has grown, but it’s grown quite gradually and steadily and we’ve been able to integrate these diverse newcomers quite smoothly. The one pinch point has been having enough residence beds for everybody, but we managed to do that, and we’ve opened up something like 1,200 new beds.
It has enriched the classroom experience. As our VP international Joe Wong likes to say, when you’re teaching a course on global politics, having students in your class from those countries who can speak with firsthand knowledge of the history, the culture, the political environment, is so enriching for everybody.
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Twelve years ago you mentioned a rethinking of undergraduate education. These days I hear people saying, “Should my kid even go to university?” Is undergraduate education in a good place?
While I’ve heard the same kind of negative comments, people vote with their feet and their pocketbooks and we’ve had no shortage of students knocking on the door.
We now have work integrated learning of various forms, including co-op professional experience, which started in applied science and engineering and has spread across the university. Another really popular form of experiential learning is entrepreneurship. We have 12 incubators or accelerators across our three campuses, all of which are full.
Many people have made a case for increased government funding of universities. Why isn’t the money coming?
It’s a great question, and it’s one that keeps us all up at night, not just in this country.
We’ve tracked the declining confidence that the public seems to have in institutions of higher education. Particularly in the American context, elite universities have really not addressed the access challenge.
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Malcolm Gladwell, one of our famous alumni, said how proud he is of his alma mater because when he looks at Ivy League institutions they pride themselves on the number of qualified students they reject, whereas U of T prides itself on the number of qualified students it admits. And he’s not wrong.
If citizens don’t see the opportunity for themselves or their children to avail themselves of this top-quality education, then they lose confidence very quickly.
What was the worst thing you had to deal with as president?
We had a TA strike in 2015 or 2016. That was a tough one, but we were able to resolve it successfully. We had the Jordan Peterson affair. We had a censure from the Canadian Association of University Teachers with regard to the international human-rights program at the Faculty of Law. We had the encampment last year. Those were some of the most challenging moments.
Jordan Peterson was a hot-button issue. When you look back, what do you make of that moment?
We had many requests to dismiss him, to fire him, or to suspend him without pay. Our view was, if you disagree with this colleague, then engage him substantively.
It was a reminder that the appropriate response for controversial speech is more speech, not less speech. You want to encourage people to come forward with alternative views, and you want to create a platform where those competing views can actually engage with one another.
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Should U of T, as a top-ranked research university, be treated differently than other schools?
I think there’s a compelling case. We have a global stature and yet we compete with our peers around the world with a fraction of the resources.
As a new president, I happened to have breakfast with the president of Princeton, and within a few minutes we discovered that he had about one-tenth the number of students that U of T has and about the same operating budget. Despite that huge discrepancy in funding we have managed to achieve renown, but it’s getting harder and harder.
Another way of thinking about this is to ask whether it’s time for Canada to consider national universities. When Canada and Ontario are considering how to reinvent their economies in the wake of the Trump tariff challenges, it makes sense to lean on your best educational assets.
I’m interested by the idea of a national university. What would it look like?
I think there’s an opportunity for the feds to invest selectively in those institutions that have the strongest depth in areas of strategic significance to Canada.
Now that takes political bravery, because our long-established norm in this country has been what my predecessor, David Naylor, called the peanut-butter approach: spreading resources thinly and evenly.
This is a time when we’re rethinking everything, when we recognize that business as usual is not serving the country well. So if there was ever a moment, this would be it.