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Canadian students are increasingly taking non-linear pathways through post-secondary education (PSE). However, the structures of post-secondary systems in our provinces and territories, and the various mechanisms that bind them, do not always provide clearly apparent and unobstructed pathways for students, particularly for mobile students.
Monograph 2: Navigating Post-secondary Education in Canada: The Challenges of a Changing Landscape
Background
As a starting point for a national dialogue, CCL published three annual reports on the state of post-secondary education in Canada over the last four years. These reports provided an overview of the Canadian PSE landscape while highlighting various issues common among education jurisdictions and institutions.
Canada's PSE landscape is increasingly broad and complex. As Canada’s youth consider their PSE options, they are faced with potentially costly decisions that could limit their opportunity to pursue further education.
In the past, Canadian PSE has been described as binary, a term that indicates the presence of two separate institutional sectors: public universities offering academic and professional programming at the degree-level; and public colleges providing diplomas and certificates in programs of a more technical or vocational nature. However, this conceptualization overlooks private post-secondary institutions and more diverse types of degrees issued by a variety of new post-secondary institutions. As a result, the distinction between the university and college sectors has become increasingly blurred, and the nature of some Canadian post-secondary institutions is no longer made clear by their names.
Students’ ideas about which institutions offer which programs, and which programs lead to which opportunities, may not be aligned with evolutionary and legislative changes in many Canadian jurisdictions. Program choice and fit might be better addressed through the provision of a classification framework aimed at making Canadian PSE more transparent to its users.
Canada does not have a clear framework for understanding the many changes that have occurred within its PSE sector. This monograph sets out to explain these changes, with a view to clarifying their potential effects on students’ comprehension of, and mobility through, the structures that comprise our current PSE landscape.
In the absence of a clear understanding of institutional and credential types, students may find it increasingly difficult to navigate institutions and programs. This may undermine their ability to discover the best pathways to achieving their aspirations. Moreover, the challenges that students sometimes face when moving between institutions intensify as systems diversify.
This monograph sets out to explain the effects that evolutionary and legislated system-design changes can have on students’ understanding of Canada’s PSE sector, how it functions and the various opportunities it provides. In so doing, we argue that a new approach to classifying PSE is required to provide students with a clearer and more accurate understanding of the sector and the many opportunities it provides.
The monograph is organized into five parts:
Part 1: Beyond the Binary Model: Canada’s Post-secondary Institutions and Credentials―a brief synopsis of the development of the institutions and structures of Canada's PSE systems, surveying the different types of institutions and credentials currently in Canada; Part 2: Increased Differentiation, Inter-institutional Relationships and Student Mobility―a contextual discussion describing the forces behind institutional transformation and examining the ways in which system design can impact upon student mobility and the transparency of post-secondary education information; Part 3: Classifying Canadian Post-secondary Institutions―an examination of various approaches to the classification of post-secondary institutions and qualifications; Part 4: Sorting Out Canadian PSE: Can It Be Done?―an exploration of whether current approaches are sufficient to help students sort out their many post-secondary opportunities; and Conclusion—a discussion of whether the implementation of a widely understood institutional classification is needed.
Part 1: Beyond the Binary Model: Canada’s Post-secondary Institutions and Credentials―a brief synopsis of the development of the institutions and structures of Canada's PSE systems, surveying the different types of institutions and credentials currently in Canada;
Part 2: Increased Differentiation, Inter-institutional Relationships and Student Mobility―a contextual discussion describing the forces behind institutional transformation and examining the ways in which system design can impact upon student mobility and the transparency of post-secondary education information;
Part 3: Classifying Canadian Post-secondary Institutions―an examination of various approaches to the classification of post-secondary institutions and qualifications;
Part 4: Sorting Out Canadian PSE: Can It Be Done?―an exploration of whether current approaches are sufficient to help students sort out their many post-secondary opportunities; and
Conclusion—a discussion of whether the implementation of a widely understood institutional classification is needed.
Conceptual Model for Sorting Canadian Post-secondary Institutions
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