In reply to Gilbert (Formative Assessment Guy).

Yes, Tony's perspective is quite different from what we were proposing. We were looking at how UNB could become a leader in the elearning space. Our proposal had nothing to do with regional economic development. I too, find the link rather tenuous. The core of the economic development argument seems to be:

"However, the fastest growing part of the economy is the information and communications technology sector. Although ‘core’ computer science is an important part of that, corporate and commercial e-learning and electronic games are also important business sectors. Furthermore, if the university can develop more students with the skills and competencies needed in a knowledge-based economy, there is an opportunity for even greater economic growth in this sector, as graduates establish new, small companies in niche areas."

I don't know many graduates in this region who establish start-ups. There is a lack of access to angel and VC money, for instance. There is also no culture of start-ups, with their high failure rates, in the region. If you fail once in Atlantic Canada, that's it. This is not silicon valley and UNB is not Stanford. David Campbell recently remarked on this:

"I remember the frustration of the folks involved in that effort back in the 1990s to get a risk capital pool started. They assembled a group of wealthy NBers and asked them to all put some green in a pot. Then they would hear pitches from entrepreneurs and decide in whom to invest. The frustration was these angels had the risk tolerance of a bank and the return expectation of a loan shark (or an ATM). If we don’t have small brown envelopes of cash to throw at interesting ideas, we will have fewer entrepreneurs."