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Formal post-secondary education has become crucial to Canada’s prosperity and our quality of life in a global knowledge-based economy. There is an unprecedented demand for post-secondary graduates in the job market, and a growing gap between available PSE graduates and the number of positions unfilled for lack of qualified candidates. Both the demand and the gap will increase.
Canadians understand this. A survey we conducted last year found that nearly 90 percent of Canadians agree that a highly skilled and educated workforce is the single most important thing Canada needs to ensure its economic future. But while Canada enjoys a position of strength in key metrics of post-secondary education, Canadians have a right to be concerned about the future of post-secondary education in Canada – and especially in the crucial interchange between post-secondary education and the workforce.
Let me begin with the good news. Canada enjoys one of the highest levels of PSE graduates in the world. Since 1990, the percentage of Canadians holding a Bachelor’s degree has nearly doubled, to over 13 percent. But to find the source of Canada’s strength in PSE attainment scores, look to the certificate- and diploma-issuing post-secondary institutions, including the colleges. Last year, about 30 percent of Canadians held a post-secondary certificate or diploma.
So young Canadians recognize the importance of PSE and are advancing to higher education in record numbers. Between 1990 and 2005, the participation rate of young people in any type of post-secondary schooling increased from 28 percent to 41 percent.
But against the good news, let me deliver some bad news. When we look beyond the current decade, the demographics are more troubling. The youth cohort will decline after 2013 as the “echo” generation moves through the system, and participation is expected to hit rock bottom about a decade later.
In the meantime, Canada’s governments and people continue to invest more and more in PSE – that’s good news. In 2006 – 2007, about $36 billion in public money was spent on post-secondary education, with billions more of private money. In fact, we have been a leader among OECD countries in terms of public and private investment in education and training as a percentage of GDP.
In spite of recessions, debt and deficit crises, and other demands on public spending, public expenditures on PSE as a proportion of overall social spending remained stable during the 1990s. They increased afterwards. This is a testament to the high priority that the Canadian public and various governments place on education. The latest data show that Canada ranks third in investment in education, behind the US and Korea. That’s good news.
But once again, I need to temper this message with bad news: Canada’s rate of growth in investment has been significantly lower this decade than in the past decade and other countries are closing the gap.
The fact that other countries are beginning to catch up with us warns us that we have no room for complacency. And when we look at other important elements of post-secondary education in Canada, we soon realize that far from being complacent, we have great cause for concern.
Some of the most troubling news comes from observing the skills shortage in the labour market. The shortage will get worse in coming decades, as a result of low apprenticeship completion rates, limited portability in 87% of trade occupations, Canada’s aging population, and a 50% decline over the last decade in the percentage of new immigrants holding skilled trade qualifications. We are already encountering mismatches between labour market needs and our capacity to fill them, whether through apprenticeships in the skilled trades or through training of engineers and scientists.
Another major problem with our post-secondary institutions is their inability to address the demand for adult education. One-and-a-half million Canadians have unmet job-related adult education and training needs. The needs of adult learners for more flexible, affordable and responsive methods of accessing PSE are not adequately met. Increased learning options for adults need to be developed both within the workplace and post-secondary institutions, including guidance and counselling to link learning to employment opportunities.
A problem of even greater magnitude that has not been addressed by post-secondary institutions is the needs of nine million Canadian adults who lack the literacy skills required in modern society. There are no systems in place to support these people.
This has been a long list on the “bad news” side of the ledger. And I have not even come to the bit of bad news that has many of you very worried: even though university enrolments have been increasing, contributing significantly to Canada’s high PSE attainment scores, the number of students in colleges and CEGEPs has actually dropped last year in many parts of the country. In Ontario, for example, applications to colleges fell 2.2 percent last year.
For generations, a college education has been perceived as less prestigious and profitable than a university degree. This has led many young people to pursue university education when they may in fact find a college education more personally and financially rewarding. But how do you unseat a deep cultural bias?
All this has led to a profound re-examination within your community. What can be done to attract more students to the college system? Some institutions have responded by trying to become more like universities.
I am not saying that granting applied degrees or doing applied research is a bad thing – quite the contrary. But what I want to emphasize is that colleges should build on their strengths and on their unique contributions.
But others have emphasized what makes our college system unique, and have built upon the strengths of a system that is well suited for preparing Canada’s labour force for the challenges of the knowledge-based economy. I think, when we look at the challenges of matching Canada’s knowledge workers with the demands of a growing economy, this is a very viable strategy.
After all, the community college system has grounded its curriculum in strong linkages with local and regional economies and direct partnerships with industry. These linkages include internship programs and work placements, business and labour representatives sitting on boards and committees, and community input in curriculum development. The trends in today’s labour markets will increase the demand for college diplomas; I think that you have destiny on your side.
Canada’s college system is widely admired around the world for the way in which it meets learner needs. Other countries would like to replicate the success Canadian colleges have enjoyed in bringing education to rural and remote areas and responding to the needs of different groups, such as Aboriginal Canadians.
The challenges Canada faces in matching post-secondary education with the demands of a global knowledge-based economy provide community colleges with a real opportunity. But responding to that opportunity will require something more than the piecemeal, uncoordinated approach that has been typical of Canada’s approach to post-secondary education thus far. We need to complement and broaden the traditional focus that comes from the provincial jurisdiction over formal education. We can make the pan-Canadian whole stronger than the sum of the provincial parts.
I believe that, were the provinces and the federal government able to agree upon goals, objectives, benchmarks and targets, each jurisdiction would have a better chance to succeed. We would be able to reach consensus on issues that have a big impact on the quality of Canada’s PSE system: issues of access, transfer of credits, recognition of prior learning, health care, human resource planning, research, development and innovation are all areas that should not be addressed within each jurisdiction with little thought on how we can progress together as a nation.
Canada is one of the very few highly industrialized countries that does not have a national strategy for post-secondary education. Federal states like Australia or the US have come up with their own solutions. Even the EU, with its individual countries, has been able to set common goals, benchmarks and targets.
We need to make the case very carefully so that we do not raise unnecessary concerns. No one is proposing that the federal government intercede in areas that are clearly within provincial jurisdiction. But when we look at what each of the provinces is trying to do in post-secondary education, we find there is considerable ground for joint action. Provincially mandated statements of goals and objectives for PSE show striking similarities and common themes, for example. The time has come to forge from these statements an explicitly stated, harmonized set of objectives and targets for PSE across the country. Those societies that set the conditions for success will be those that prosper – economically, socially, and educationally. Those that hide their heads in jurisdictional sands will fall behind.
We can start with the basic data for post-secondary education. A paradox in Canadian PSE is that a country that is a world leader in key metrics such as attainment nevertheless has failed to provide data that enable international comparison. In an annual education report released last month by the OECD, Education at a Glance, Canada was unable to report figures for 60 percent of the information gathered by the other 39 countries the report covered. Canada ranks last among the 40 OECD member and partner countries when it comes to the amount of PSE information provided for the annual survey.
We cannot provide any information on participation, enrolment or graduation in our colleges, for example. We lacked sufficient data for dropout rates in our colleges and universities. We were unable to provide any information to the OECD about who participates in our post-secondary education system.
A data strategy for post-secondary education in Canada is an essential prerequisite for Canada’s future prosperity, social sustainability and cohesion. Without a pan-Canadian strategy to obtain the necessary data, the full potential of the enormous public and private investments in PSE will not yield the maximum benefits.
Last year, we proposed a set of eight goals and objectives for the PSE sector. They were drawn from the strategic plans for PSE outlined by the provinces and territories. These are: a skilled and adaptable workforce; innovation, knowledge creation and knowledge transfer; an active, healthy citizenry; quality; access for all Canadians, participation of under-represented groups; lifelong learning; and affordable and sustainable PSE and training.
We proposed a series of 75 indicators to identify what we know in Canada about each goal, and how we might track performance. In this year’s report on post-secondary education, we update the data, and fill in some of the gaps in data we identified last year. We also raise the question of which benchmarks other countries or organizations use in developing goals for PSE, and which might be most useful in assessing the post-secondary system in Canada as a whole.
We hope this report will stimulate a wide-ranging ranging discussion on both the need for a pan-Canadian approach to post-secondary education, and the metrics that can be used to stimulate the best possible performance of the PSE sector.
This is an excellent time to launch a discussion on the need for a pan-Canadian approach. The federal government has included a “Knowledge Advantage” as part of its overall Advantage Canada strategy; among the attributes, the best-educated, most skilled, and most flexible workforce. A knowledge advantage for Canada invites us to think in pan-Canadian terms, and nowhere is that more important than in the post-secondary sector, which prepares our citizens to meet the demands of a labour market that urgently requires more skills and knowledge.
You have come here from all across the country, and your primary focus is the day-to-day running of your colleges. And here you have met others who face those same exigencies. I’m sure that you have found that you have much in common.
What I am inviting you to do now is to take another step in your frame of reference. Don’t think of one another simply as colleagues who share similar challenges in spite of the fact that you work in different jurisdictions. Consider yourselves as colleagues who share a common challenge, and you have an opportunity to address it together.
That challenge is the need to make Canada’s community colleges a source of undisputed strength in Canada’s education system – a strength that builds on your recognized ability to match your programs with the needs of the knowledge economy. The stakes are very large: the prosperity, quality of life, and social cohesion of Canada. But the resources at our disposal are very large as well. Canada enjoys many advantages in its education sector, and the colleges are regarded around the world as leading-edge pioneers of how PSE institutions can have a significant impact on the skills and knowledge of workers in a community.
I urge you to continue the innovative programs to encourage more people to attend colleges – College Ontario’s $1 million advertising campaign is a great start. I urge you to look for ways to fill the existing gaps that our PSE system has not adequately addressed – a more flexible approach to adult learning, for example, and the challenge of increasing adult literacy. I urge you to help us make the case for collecting the data that will go toward creating benchmarks, and goals to which the entire post-secondary education sector can aspire.
And above all, I urge you to think pan-Canadian. Thank you.
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