Strategic Management Upside Down: Tracking Strategies at McGill University from 1829 to 1980

Canadian Journal of Administrative Sciences, Dec 2003 by Mintzberg, Henry, Rose, Jan

When we considered the same figures by Faculty, we seemed to get not more explanation but less, because the overall highly ordered trend line appears to comprise others of mostly greater variability. Arts and Science, as the largest Faculty, followed a similar trend line but with greater short-term variability around the mean; Medicine appears to have stopped major growth at the turn of the century; Engineering exhibited greater variability until enrollment stabilized after the post World War II surge; Graduate Faculty grew faster but with greater variability, as did Management, while Law showed slower growth but with higher short-term cyclically. With the whole university generally growing faster and steadier than its individual Faculties, the conclusion can be drawn that it grew more by adding activities than by expanding existing ones. In other words, McGill grew especially by the diversification of its offerings.

Certain faculties controlled their enrollment very carefully, notably Law and Medicine. In fact, the Quebec Bar controlled numbers in the Law Faculty, for example, with a deliberate target for a time of no more than 500 students. In the case of Medicine, the number of beds in the Montreal teaching hospitals was a key factor. Other Faculties, notably Arts and Science, did not limit numbers so much as accept any student who met certain criteria. In the case of Engineering, enrollment was partially controlled, especially in times of growth (e.g., before the First War and in the early 1950s), due to equipment restrictions. But when interest waned, enrollment was opened up. Indeed, the university went to great efforts to sustain Engineering when demand dropped, implying a kind of smoothing behaviour with regard to the total number of students.

Considering the figures overall, Medicine rose first (that is how McGiIl began its existence) followed by Arts and Science and then Engineering, so that just after the turn of the century, the university was a balanced mixture of these three. Then Arts and Science surged ahead, but by the mid-1920s, McGill was a general university with an almost full range of offerings, much as it is today, although Graduate Faculty enrollment grew rapidly after World War Two as research became more prominent.

Considering the geographic breakdown in Figure 3, for most of the study period McGiIl had a significant population of foreign students. Additionally, before the turn of the century it enrolled as many students from outside Quebec as from within it. Since 1915, however, in waves, it became an increasingly Quebec (and especially Montreal) institution, although foreign enrollments (U.S. and abroad) did grow rapidly after World War Two.

Quebec enrollment followed the pattern of total enrollment, more or less, and in fact constituted most of it. The rest of Canada exhibited somewhat wider swings and much slower growth in this century, while growth in American as well as offshore enrollment maintained roughly the same rate as Quebec, but with wider swings. It is interesting that all the lines, save that for Quebec, meet just before the end of the study period.