Canada has a network of publicly funded educational and research institutions; in particular, the system of universities and colleges. These institutions train successive generations of researchers and practitioners. The physical sciences dominate these institutions, attracting most of the government sponsored funding of university research. Research in the physical sciences, and increasingly in the social sciences as well, is most often done in collaboration with industry and business interests, who also provide substantial funding for university based research. The majority of students attending these institutions receive training in the physical sciences.
The social sciences and humanities, however, do not receive the same collaborative support. Canadian
A church and townhouses line a street, with Quebec City, Quebec, behind them.
postsecondary education is based on a "liberal arts" model which recognizes the importance of breadth of scholarship in all fields of human endeavor as a key to a successful education and to success as a citizen. Both economic constraints in recent decades, as well as ideological shifts in how education is defined and valued, has led, however, to the erosion of financial support for both the social sciences and the humanities. While Canada maintains a major funding body for research in the social science and humanities, its resources have declined in recent years, which has been the object of considerable political dispute.
Although the official commitment to the humanities and social sciences, among politicians, educators, and most of the public, remains substantial, the trend has been toward an increasingly technocratic model of higher education. While education has often celebrated, championed, and enhanced the ethnic and cultural diversity of Canada, economic and political changes are shifting emphasis away from diversity in the direction of a kind of practical homogenization in which practical application and financial benefit takes precedence over the breadth and depth of knowledge and understanding. This puts the social sciences and humanities in a precarious position, as the political culture of Canada changes.
