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Canada faces growing pressure to measure and report on the performance of its post-secondary learning sector
Ottawa, ON.—Claude Balthazard leafs through a stack of résumés sent to him from job candidates who have graduated from a host of technical colleges; some of the institutions he knows by name while others are relative newcomers in the rapidly changing post-secondary scene.
As he surveys the pile of resumes, Balthazard asks himself many questions about the applicants: Who will be the hardest worker? Who’s got the edge in skills and knowledge? Who are the innovators, or the most dedicated to on-the-job learning?
“It’s not at all straightforward,” says Balthazard. As the director of human resources excellence at the Human Resources Professionals Association in Toronto, he looks at many factors when it comes to hiring, and the quality of education is perpetually near the top of that list.
For decades, Canada’s universities and colleges have enjoyed a glowing reputation around the world. Yet, the PSE sector has undergone remarkable growth over the past five years, making easy comparisons between institutions increasingly more complicated.
For learners, that means they have to do searches online, and gather opinions from friends and teachers. Meanwhile, employers are left to rely on their own knowledge, experience and subjective perception of a school’s reputation.
“People know the schools, certainly in their own town or province,” Balthazard says. “But for somebody from out of town, they may not know anything at all about them.”
This means that well-established universities, colleges and trade programs have a distinct edge over newer institutions that haven’t had a chance to cultivate a reputation. The result, says Balthazard, is that some employers are reticent about newer, private institutions.
“If somebody comes to you with a diploma from someplace you’ve never heard of, you’re not likely to give it as much value as one you know personally—for better or for worse.”
This doubt applies to many private colleges because employers tend to know less about the expanding sector. As a result, Balthazard says many employers end up asking themselves “How good is the quality of [an applicants] education?”
So many choices
Over the past two decades, Canada’s post-secondary education (PSE) sector has undergone a remarkable period of change. The landscape has grown to include a range of options, from community colleges that grant degrees and universities that hand out diplomas, to online universities and polytechnics that combine theoretical and applied learning. There is also a wider range of private institutions, including business schools, training colleges and a number of full-fledged universities.
“If you have a university degree from McGill, say, it’s pretty straightforward,” says Paul Cappon, President and CEO of the Canadian Council on Learning (CCL), which just published its latest report on the state of post-secondary education in Canada. “But if you are an employer in P.E.I. considering candidates with an education in journalism for example, and one is from a private school you have never heard of in Manitoba, how do you assess that candidates competencies?”
For learners, this greater choice can be a boon. For example, anyone living in Alberta can take advantage of distance learning or e-learning opportunities, while those in rural Canada can begin their post-secondary education at a community college nearby, then continue it in a larger city later on.
But a more crowded PSE scene raises a host of new questions. If PSE can be viewed as a product, what kind of warranty is available to the consumers—including the students, their parents and future employers? Does the piece of paper that graduates earn guarantee that the program content, the teaching and the facilities meet a certain standard of quality? And how does that standard compare to others, not just in Canada—but internationally.
This is why the issue of accountability inherent to a quality assurance framework for PSE is crucial, especially for students who can easily invest tens of thousands of dollars in an education.
It’s equally important for the labour market. Employers are generally prepared to do some on-the-job training, but they expect graduates to have emerged from their post-secondary education with a particular package of skills and knowledge and a commitment and ability to learn.
Balthazard doesn’t think the solution should be a national ranking, in which one school or program is awarded a higher or lower grade than a competitor.
But he says some kind of set and known minimum standard is essential for reassuring employers that graduates of any learning institution—in Canada or abroad—have earned a legitimate degree, diploma, certificate or credential.
Canada as a whole also has a stake in the quality of higher learning. Demographic projections warn that, with the pending retirement of the Baby Boom generation, there’s a strong risk that Canada won’t have enough skilled and knowledgeable workers to meet its social and economic needs.
And, while Canadians used to pride themselves on their educated population, other nations are hard on our heels. According to the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), the number of people enrolled in universities and college around the world soared from 68 million in 1991 to 132 million in 2004.
In order to remain competitive, some experts argue that Canada needs to show it is capable of sustaining its reputation for producing high-quality post-secondary graduates from all learning institutions, whether in the public or private spheres well into the future. And that, in turn, will demand a consistent and comprehensive quality-assurance framework that clearly describes our standards of quality, and establishes procedures to evaluate an institution or program against these standards over time.
According to the supporters of such an initiative, a quality-assurance framework would improve the accountability aspect of PSE institutions to both their users and their funding bodies, and will help ensure that Canada’s PSE graduates can help Canada meet its social and economic needs for tomorrow.
Some moves are already afoot, in Canada and abroad, to develop such a mechanism.
In Europe, for instance, the Bologna Process is seeking to bring 46 countries together in a European Higher Education Area by 2010. The process is addressing such issues as uniform standards and qualifications, and simplifying the transfer of credits between jurisdictions.
Down under, Australia is also hammering away at a national framework to ensure the quality of its higher education system.
And, in Canada, the three-year-old Higher Education Quality Council of Ontario is working toward a quality-assurance framework for the province’s universities and colleges.
Missing numbers
The first step, though, will be to gather the cold, hard data about standards, outcomes and performance—data that can be measured, tallied, studied, analyzed and compared by people here and beyond our borders.
But, as CCL’s report reveals, the road ahead is long and steep.
The data collection required to create a national picture of quality assurance is a complicated business, involving the federal government, the 13 provincial and territorial jurisdictions, and post-secondary institutions whether public or private.
What’s more, the concept of quality is broad, taking into account such factors as student satisfaction and engagement, cognitive skill development, and exemplary teaching and research practices.
Still, experts insist it’s urgent that Canada meet the challenge. It’s urgent for consumers, the eight of 10 young adults who now invest in a post-secondary education, and for the country as a whole, which now spends some $34 billion a year on higher learning.
“We’ve always been known around the world as producing excellent students—highly skilled graduates from our post-secondary education system,” says Paul Cappon. “But how do we guarantee that this will continue in the future, that our educational standard doesn’t slip?
“Who’s minding the shop for future generations?”
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