Former Economic Council of Canada chair Judith Maxwell writes on the post-secondary education "access gap" in today's Globe and Mail:
It's called the access gap and it's been getting wider.
According to the Canada Millennium Scholarship Foundation, 81 per cent of 18 to 24 year olds whose parents have university degrees participate in postsecondary education, compared to 53 per cent for young people whose parents did not go past high school. About 40 per cent of 20 year olds showed no sign of attending a college, vocational or university program in 2003.
There are at least three reasons to encourage these young people to become the first generation in their family to complete a postsecondary program. Most job creation in future decades will require a degree or diploma; Canada is already facing selected labour shortages; and, just when we need them most, the number of 18 to 24 year olds will begin to decline after 2011, as a result of the baby bust of the 1990s.
The young people facing the access gap come from low-income families - many are aboriginal or children of recent immigrants. For these families, the average $16,800 annual cost for a full-time university program is intimidating.
But the first barrier they face is not financial, it's attitudinal. In a Statistics Canada study ("Why Are Youth from Lower-income Families Less Likely to Attend University?"), Mark Frenette found that barriers related to academic ability, high school quality and parental influence account for 84 per cent of the access gap.
3 comments:
particularly within the group of people that I grew up with I have noticed that quite a few have chosen to complete a trade program (ie: carpentry). There is quick money in opting to go to school to become a trades-person.
Many of my friends have received their trade certification and traveled to Alberta or British Columbia to obtain high paying jobs. Whereas, I have stayed to complete my B.A. Honours and hopefully my M.A. in september.
It has become easier to gain higher paying jobs with trades education than a university degree. If I had just stopped my post-secondary education at my B.A. I would be hard pressed to gain any employment. On the opposite side of the coin, if I had learned a trade I would be able to gain employment easier than with my B.A.
Are we allowed to rant in these blogs? :) I didn’t realize how passionate (opininated!) I was on this topic until I started to post a reply!
I have to say that I have a real problem with this original posting. The authors have chosen a few sentences from the “Why Are Youth from Lower-income Families Less Likely to Attend University?" study and created, what I believe to be, a misleading – or at least not totally accurate - picture. The sentence “But the first barrier they (youth from lower-income families) face is not financial, it's attitudinal.” It sounds like parents from lower-income families have no interest in sending their children off to PSE.
Well your attitude towards a whole lot of things is different when you have, or have not, the necessary money needed for something – including your child’s education. Of course, there are lots of parents and students who do have an interest in PSE, however the impact of lack of finances spans across all the “other” reasons. From the Report - “Family income may pose different barriers to attending university. First, differences in academic performance across the income distribution may themselves be the result of differences in family income. Families with more financial resources may spend more money on books for children, take their children to museums, spend more on daycare in the early years, locate in neighbourhoods with better schools, etc. These actions may result in higher performance on standardized and scholastic tests, and thus, in a higher probability of attending university in the future. Second, upon deciding to attend university, students may be faced with another barrier that is related to their family’s financial position: credit constraints.”
To me, the bottom line is money and the cost of PSE in Canada. Parents who do not want their children to pay off students loans for years (or have to declare bankruptcy!) may understandably not encourage their children to go to university. The cost of tuition, living away from home (given the geography of Canada and the limited universities/colleges in each province), travel, etc can be quite substantial.
I do agree that the problem may be “attitudinal” – but I suspect it has more to do with governments’ attitudes and policies, not necessarily the parents.
marilyn
"Families with more financial resources may spend more money on books for children, take their children to museums, spend more on daycare in the early years, locate in neighbourhoods with better schools, etc. These actions may result in higher performance on standardized and scholastic tests, and thus, in a higher probability of attending university in the future."
This is social reproduction theory in a nutshell.
Post a Comment