Ontario’s cash-starved universities are competing fiercely for students, and as a result are putting a little more humanity in their messages.

While emphasizing more they are ready to educate for a changing economy, the universities are stressing that they are more welcoming to students and accommodating to those with families so they can cope with both roles at the same time.

A review by this writer of the universities’ advertising shows some still stress the merits of their teachers, but less their academic credentials and more their personal, colourful characteristics.

McMaster University boasts that the director of its new Centre for Medical Robotics, Dr. Dave Williams, is a former astronaut who holds the Canadian record for walking in space – a rare opportunity to learn from those who have been there.

Universities boast less that they have heavyweight administrators, although University of Ottawa still tries to impress by pointing to its governors, who include such as luminaries as Peter Herrndorf of the National Arts Centre.

Only one university, McMaster, brags of its ability to raise money, in a full-page ad saying 36,000 supporters had donated $473 million to it over four years, which is not necessarily proof of merit.

Universities now are more likely to point to their students as achievers. University of Guelph focuses on one of its students who won a Canadian National Brain Bee and another who climbed Mount Kilimanjaro to raise funds for an AIDS clinic in Africa and says it is cultivating the next generation of great thinkers and doers.

Brock University devoted a full page to Rohan Kothari, a biological sciences student, who it says is doing groundbreaking research aimed at reversing the human aging process when he is not hitting the high notes on his saxophone.

Universities now inject more personal anecdotes about their students and commonly feature those of Asian and African backgrounds, suggesting they welcome students of all races. One Ontario university was accused of racism a few years ago.

More universities promise to train for careers in new industries and involving other countries, knowing technology is changing and some of best jobs require understanding China and India.

Durham College urges students get in the growing field of renewable, sustainable and alternative energy, including solar and wind power, which will be useful particularly if Ontario’s Liberal government ever has stable policies in these areas.

Ryerson University promises to teach real world challenges. The mammoth University of Toronto claims that since scientists associated with it invented Pablum 80 years ago it still is generating new ideas and high-impact innovations, although it would have been more relevant if it cited some more recent. build global careers with specialized knowledge of China and the Asia Pacific region.

Among those offering more personal help to students, the Richard Ivey School of Business at University of Western Ontario allows students to train for a master of business degree four consecutive days once a month, so they can continue their jobs and family commitments.

Fleming College promises a friendly faculty who know students by name and hands-on learning, a far cry from when one of my five children studied at York and asked a professor when she could see him outside classroom hours to ask supplementary questions. He told her “you can’t — I don’t provide it.”

Notwithstanding all these costly advertisements, one university, Waterloo, has an advantage that without even trying may attract more students more than others.

Waterloo is a top-level university in its own right and Stephen Hawking, the world’s most famous mathematician and theoretical physicist, is distinguished research chair at the nearby Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics.

The two institutions are independent of each other, but newspapers publish headlines such as Hawking Spends Summer at Waterloo, Hawking Trumpets Waterloo’s Physics Credibility and, when she went to the research centre, Queen Visits University of Waterloo. Other universities must yearn for such helpful publicity.