Various staff members are criticizing Carleton’s deal with a private company to provide English training to foreign students.
CultureWorks calls itself an “English for Academic Purposes (EAP) school, that prepares international students to succeed in Canadian colleges and Universities,” on its website. Like other partnering schools, Carleton will now be offering conditional acceptance to those students enrolled in CultureWorks.
According to Carleton vice-president (academic) Peter Ricketts’ Sept. 28 report to the university senate, CultureWorks “is a private Canadian ESL college that delivers non-credit ESL for preparation for university studies” and is to act as “an agent to recruit international students for the host university.”
The program has been strongly criticized by various members of the Carleton University Academic Staff Association (CUASA).
“We’re very concerned,” social sciences senator Patrizia Gentile said. “Based on our understanding from the reading of the CultureWorks website . . . once the student pays their tuition fee . . . they get a conditional acceptance to Carleton.”
According to Gentile, this contravenes Senate policy.
“In order to get a conditional acceptance at Carleton you have to have done at least three years of high school education in a North American high school, or passed specific language tests,” she said.
Gentile said CUASA has three main concerns regarding the company: the issue of student requirements, the issue of the school space that a company like CultureWorks will occupy, and the issue of public accessibility, which she says is threatened by the presence of a private corporation.
“Students are told constantly that there’s no space, but there’s always space when it comes to a private corporation,” Gentile said.
“When we start allowing private corporations that claim to be able to do what we do, come into our doors, what the upper administration is doing is . . . slowly destroying the concept and the practice of public institutions.”
Carleton ESL professor Peggy Hartwick agrees that the presence of a private company is a concern.
“The problem is that they’re a private company working at a publicly funded institution,” Hartwick said.
“They are benefiting from Carleton’s logo and reputation which is a concern and should be a concern for us as professional academics.”
Hartwick said Carleton already has an ESL program.
“Obviously we feel a little bit threatened,” she said, referring to the linguistics department.
“[CultureWorks] are advertising what we’re already doing and doing well on campus.”
However, Carleton vice-president (students and enrolment) Suzanne Blanchard said the aim of CultureWorks is not to compete with the current ESL program, but to provide an opportunity for students who otherwise wouldn’t be able to attend Carleton.
“The students that are academically admissible but cannot function at an English level proficiency acceptable at this point to start undergraduate degree studies will be referred to . . . CultureWorks,” she said.
Current ESL programs at Carleton “only admit students up to a certain level of proficiency,” Blanchard said.
In detailing the process of enrolling in the program, Blanchard explained that a student must first meet the requirements of CultureWorks, and only afterwards will Carleton grant conditional acceptances to the applications of students “who meet the academic conditional requirements.”
From there, accepted students will study with CultureWorks at Carleton until they are proficient enough in English to move on.
Blanchard maintains that this new program “certainly does not duplicate anything that we already have here.”
According to its website, CultureWorks is accepting applications to study at Carleton starting January 2013.
