The B.C. government is making it too easy to create universities, according to an organization representing professors, librarians, and other academic staff at B.C.'s existing universities.

“We think the government has allowed rather narrowly focused institutions to call themselves universities,” Robert Clift, executive director of the Confederation of University Faculty Associations of B.C., told the Georgia Straight. “It's an irritant.”

Clift added that the government has “short-circuited” its own legislation governing the use of the term university by passing a special bill for B.C.'s newest postsecondary institution, the World Trade University. Premier Gordon Campbell announced the Chilliwack-based university in his September 12, 2005, throne speech.

According to the Degree Authorization Act, which was passed in 2002, it is forbidden to “directly or indirectly” use the word university to indicate that an educational program is available unless authorized to do so by the advanced-education minister. In turn, the legislation says, the minister may allow this if the institution has passed a quality-assessment process. Although the legislation specifically allows for other laws to overrule this section, the government has broken the spirit of the earlier act, Clift said.

The World Trade University Canada Establishment Act received third reading on November 3, 2005, and received royal assent on November 24. However, despite several late-August radio and daily-newspaper reports that the university will open this month, it will not admit students until the fall of 2007.

The World Trade University Canada Establishment Act has yet to be enacted by the provincial cabinet. “It was never our intention to open this fall, never,” WTU president Sujit Chowdhury told the Straight. Following a “grand opening” next April or May, the not-for-profit university expects to admit up to 140 students in its first two international Master of Business Administration degree programs in the fall of 2007, he said.

Chowdhury noted that he has lined up 22 faculty to date, of whom “95 percent” hold PhDs. He declined to name any of them.

Tuition fees for a full-time graduate program, lasting 12 to 14 months, will be US$32,000, Chowdhury said. However, he said students will receive a subsidy of 40 to 50 percent of this cost from “various agencies”.

NDP education critic Rob Fleming told the Straight that the Liberal government has gone too far in relaxing the standards.

“The trouble with the Liberals is that they seem to be swinging the doors so wide open we may not be able to sort out the legitimate from the illegitimate institutions,” Fleming said. “What's to stop McDonald's from having a university in B.C.?”

According to B.C. Health Minister George Abbott, Maximus BC is fulfilling all of the “service level requirements” it promised to meet when it signed a $324-million contract to administer the province's Medical Services Plan and PharmaCare programs.

One service-level requirement was that on a monthly basis the average time to answer calls from beneficiaries must be less than three minutes.

“I am pleased that we are seeing consistently high results from this program, a major change from the 1990s, when phone services were closed one day a week just to deal with the paperwork backlogs,” Abbott wrote in a July 19 news release.

The statement added that “service levels at the end of June 2006 included [a]nswering telephone calls from the public in an average of less than three minutes for nine months straight.”

However, according to the June issue of Maximus BC's internal newsletter, MAXe-News, the clock doesn't start ticking until after callers have negotiated the voice-mail system. This system either puts callers in one of 11 “queues” staffed by trained agents or turns them over to a self-service system to help callers get the answers themselves.

“And then the clock starts,” the newsletter says.

Health Ministry communications manager Rodney Porter told the Straight that the definition of “average response time” was the same before Maximus took over on April 1, 2005. He agreed, though, that there were no service-level requirements when ministry employees ran the system.

This week, a call by the Straight took 55 seconds to navigate through the Maximus voice-mail system before being put on hold.