Athabasca University president Dr. Neil Fassina cannot help but admire the mission that the university has, one that has not changed in 50 years.
Fassina is passionate about education and quickly makes anyone listening to him speak about the outstanding success or future goals for AU just as passionate. Add in the words ‘distance education’ and Fassina is off exploring the opportunities the university and its students have.
“The ability to systematically dismantled barriers between a learner and their learning objectives. Our goal is to be able to open doors to the success in higher education,” he expressed.
We're in over 90 countries around the world. A learner can come to us without having to leave home. They can do a Canadian credential from wherever they are in the world, provided they have a cellphone. We are very much a global campus.”
The open-door model is important to AU, allowing anyone who applies to be accepted and not have to jump through hoops or encounter barriers as well as enrol and start their course whenever they want instead of the traditional September or January.
“Having been through a series of environments (personally) that use proxies to select who can and who cannot come in, you can't help but reflect on those people that can't,” he said. “You start to pay attention to AU’s mission in a very different way. You start to see the impact of a university that says, ‘Listen, we're open. If you have a passion to learn, come on and show us that your passion is there.’”
The uniqueness of AU is not limited to its open enrolment and distance education model, it is also one of four comprehensive academic and research universities in Alberta.
Within the higher education system there is what is referred to as the six-sector model; six different kind of kinds of institutions. The six kinds include teaching, polytechnical, and community colleges, all having a different mandate.
The comprehensive academic and research university is one of those kinds.
"A comprehensive academic and research university has a mandate for two primary elements. The first is comprehensive academic programming,” Fassina explained. “What that means is that we can deliver everything from a certificate to a PhD. The only thing that we're not enabled to deliver is something in the skilled trades.
That's on the learning side, and on the research side, what it enables us to do is we get to participate actively in everything from pure or basic research through to applied early stage commercialization.”
Fassina used social science as one example that is not lab intensive, but AU researchers still do research the same as any other social scientist would.
Fassina also noted that some researchers who require lab space will partner with local institutions where they live, citing biologists who are connected to the University of Calgary and access hard labs there.
Another example Fassina used was Dr. Martin Connors who uses the observatory in a dark sky preserve outside of the town of Athabasca.
"It gives us a unique spot to do that kind of thing because of physically where we're located,” he added. "We are physically located in what is arguably an epicenter of a whole series of different industries. We are the only comprehensive research university that is found in that kind of magic epicenter.”
Fassina gets fired up talking about all the opportunities laying at the feet of AU because of its location.
“We are at the one of the southern points of the longest uninterrupted rivers in North America; fourth longest in the world – you want to talk watershed research, this is it,” Fassina explains. “The migratory environment of the biology and zoology in the region, and as I mentioned with Dr. Connors lab, find me another comprehensive research university that can claim a dark sky.
We've got this this unique kind of spot that we're looking to build on because you don't get that opportunity in other environments. When we think about the impact of a university like this, to begin, it's the only rural community in Alberta that has a comprehensive research university. Beyond the bragging rights, how do we use it?”
AU is physically located in what is arguably an epicenter of a whole series of different industries – forestry to the north and agriculture to the south and along a major energy corridor.
“When the university moved up (in 1984), it wasn't a research institution so the physical location for being a research institution has evolved,” Fassina continued. “When we were moved here, we were, for lack of a better term, a book-in-a-box institution. It was literally, you registered with us, we put your learning materials in a box, we put it on a Canada Post truck.”
Rather than resting on that initial economic development and regional diversification AU decided to make use of the strategic opportunity.
“We have got 25 years of knowing and learning and adapting behind us and so what do we offer that others don't? Let's start with the difference between Canada and the US; the online competition in the US is wild. There are just numbers and numbers of online providers in the US to the point where it is a hyper competitive environment,” Fassina stated. “In Canada, in terms of pure digital, there's one.”
Being one of the first fully online universities in the world sets AU in a unique position to forge the path.
“So, what do we offer that other online universities don't? Number one is we are public. Number two is we are continually pushing ourselves to create the next iteration,” he explained. “While I say online is table stakes today, we're trying to create online 2.0 and we'll get there, we'll do it.”
A purely digital university offers a different experience from a brick and mortar university that added digital later Fassina explained.
“It doesn't mean that universities aren't online, most of them are but the online experience that you will get from an online university is different,” he said. "The reason I say that is that what we do is we start from what an online learner wants, and then we work it back into a university. It's a very different experience, than if you were to start with a class based or a faith-based environment and trying to digitize that.”
One of the misconceptions AU has had to fight over the years in the perception that ‘open’ means free and free means lack of quality.
"To be an open university if you don't have quality, you fail your learner,” Fassina stated. “So, for us it's quality first, quality first, quality first because if you don't, our learners will vote with their feet and go where quality is.”
It took a targeted public awareness campaign to start changing the image of AU being an open university and led to a 10 per cent growth per year for 2017 and 2018 that levelled off in 2019 allowing AU to work on stability in that growth.
The current enrolment is just over 43,000 learners which equates to almost 9,000 full load equivalent (FLE) students.
“One of the statistics we do in our reporting is we report unique students, which is just more than 43,000,” Fassina explained. “Then we report a full load equivalent, which is it's a mathematical equation that says if all our students were going full time this is how many we have, and that says just south of 9000.”
One of the reasons there are so many students taking far less than a full load of classes is because they may be taking their degree at another university that does not offer a course they need, so they enrol at AU to complete it. Or, they are already in the work force and looking to upgrade.
“They are in another institution somewhere in the country, and they can't get a course to graduate, they come to us, if it wasn't for AU, they wouldn't be able to walk across the stage at their home institution,” Fassina explained. “The people that come to us for programs, it'll take them a little longer, because they have lives, have kids, they have jobs, they have dependents.”
Allowing distance learners to connect has led to Moving Beyond Place, giving students the ability to create relationships and a sense of belonging without having a physical presence. Where being online or using social media can appear to be anti-social AU has turned that into a way to bond through an integrated learning experience.
“It's that integrated learning experience that connects people,” Fassina explains. “So, we'll have people show up to convocation and (say) ‘Oh, my goodness, you're that person, it’s been eight years and I know you like a sister.’”
Those FLE numbers also become important when you are considering how viable AU is.
“When you look at funding per FLE we're actually the lowest, which means that we're a lean institution that knows how to create,” he continued. “We get less than one per cent of the money from the government that's invested in higher education and we service six per cent of the learners in the system.
We're more financially stable, more financially sustainable; we're literally investing in ourselves.”
