Posts tagged with employment.

Ontario unis: nursing’s in, journalism’s out

Joey Coleman, January 18, 2010 at 4:49 PM

Ontario's Universities' Application Centre is reporting a 2.7-per-cent increase in high school applicants received by the January 13 secondary school deadline, compared with last year. 

The breakdown of application numbers by university and program shows students are looking to smaller universities and affiliated colleges for a more personal undergraduate experience and turning to fields that lead to steady employment. Students are continuing to shun York University in the aftermath of the 2008-2009 CUPE strike at the Toronto university. They are also turning away from Journalism programs, clearly seeing the problems with a degree limited to the trade.

Two older universities, Trent and Laurentian, have seen double-digit percentage increases in applications. Algoma, Ontario's newest independent university - which was an affiliated college of Laurentian until mid-2008 - has seen a jump of more than 20 per cent, from 413 applications to 560; with a 33-per-cent increase in first-choice applicants.

Trent University is benefiting from high rankings in undergraduate surveys, the implementation of all-day GO transit commuter service from Toronto, and population growth in the eastern region of the Greater Toronto Area. The University of Ontario Institute of Technology, Ontario's newest university institution, continues to experience growth, in part due to its location east of Toronto in Oshawa, but also because of specialized programs in health sciences, engineering, and science.  Trent is seeing an increase of 14.9 per cent in applications, with a 13.2-per-cent increase in students naming Trent as their first choice. UOIT has an increase of 8.9 per cent in applications, with a 13.9-per-cent increase in first-choice applications - the highest of any full-size university in Ontario.

The affiliated colleges of the University of Western Ontario - Brescia, Huron, and King's - are experiencing large increases in applications as students increasingly turn their attention to student-faculty ratios and class sizes in choosing their institutions of study.

Algoma and Laurentian, two universities located significantly north of Toronto in Central Ontario, are both experiencing growth well above the provincial average.

Laurentian University continues to see results from their expansion of francophone course offerings and focused recruitment strategies. This year, the number of students learning in French increased by 26 per cent. LU's new president, Dominic Giroux, personally attends many recruitment events and has focused on outreach in Ontario's francophone communities and secondary schools. He also communicates with potential students as @Dominic_Giroux on Twitter.

Algoma's growth is lead by such programs as biology. Algoma's biology program is heavily focused toward environmental issues - a hot area of study.

Students are applying to education and nursing programs in record numbers. With the recession still battering families, it comes as no surprise that students are seriously weighing their employment prospects before applying to programs. Only three program areas have seen significant decreases in applications: architecture, environmental studies, and journalism. Architecture's overall drop in applications is cushioned by the fact that most of the decrease is not in first-choice students, but instead in students who listed the program as their fourth or fifth choice. Environmental studies was last year's overhyped area of study and the drop is merely a correction. Journalism, on the other hand, is another story, as students are looking at the recession-battered industry and are avoiding a degree with a higher prospect of unemployment than most other fields of study.

Toronto's York University has become a "Last Resort U" for the majority of its applicants. While applications have increased 8.8 per cent compared with last year's retreat in the wake of the disastrous CUPE strike, they still remain significantly below application numbers from 2008. Most concerning for the university is that the majority of applications list York University as third choice or lower.

Institutions will be closely scrutinizing  their individual breakdowns over the next few weeks and figuring out what strategies they need to change as they prepare to recruit the class of 2015, starting this summer.

(See also: In enrolment wars, smaller universities rise to the challenge)

Tagged with employment, university, ontario, centre, increase, application, smaller, statistics | Comments (12) |

Get ready for the second wave of recession flu

Joey Coleman, September 10, 2009 at 10:47 AM

 

Student-funded lobbying organizations have been making a big deal about the high student unemployment rate this summer. Rightfully so, as tens of thousands of students couldn't find the work necessary to fund the minimum financial contributions expected of them by student loan programs.

 

These students start the year with a deficit they'll never be able to overcome on their own. They cannot fund this deficit by increasing their hours of part-time employment; any extra money they make during the academic year will be clawed back from their student loans. In Ontario, an unemployed student is expected to contribute at least $2,710 to their studies; regardless of the fact they don't have this money.

 

The recession has hit the poor hardest, and the unequal socio-economic distribution of suffering extends to the student job market. Students from the lowest socio-economic backgrounds have less resources to use when looking for a summer job. Their parents don't have golf buddies whom they can reach out to and assist their children to find a summer job. To compound difficulties, their families are the least able to assist them in covering this deficit.

 

The challenge these students face will have to be dealt with before Christmas. If their difficulties are not addressed before the second term, there will be a significant drop in university retention rates as students hardest hit by the recession run out of funds. A recent poll conducted by Ipsos Reid, paid for by RBC Royal Bank, showed 50% of university and college students expect to run out of funds before the end of the academic year; 35% of returning students expect to hit the financial wall before Christmas.

 

Current students facing financial difficulty during the academic year are not the next recession story in higher education; they'll be the third wave of "recession flu." The segment of our youth population next to walk the plank of this financial crisis are recent graduates.

 

November is the end of the six-month student loan repayment "grace period" for the graduating classes of 2009. The unemployment rate for 15- to 24-year-olds, according to the most recent numbers from Statistics Canada, is 16.3%. The overall unemployment rate is 8.7%. The rate is reflective of the number of people looking for work. It is not unreasonable to assume a significant portion of the youth unemployment rate consists of recent graduates searching for meaningful employment.

 

Thousands of recent graduates could be without the financial means to start repayment of their loans. This will be the first real test of the government's new repayment scheme. Recent graduates will continue to add to their student loan debt and, for some, even partial payments may be too costly to afford.

 

If past experience is any guide, the response of student-funded lobbying organizations will be reactionary; they'll put out news releases in the middle of November after someone else sounds the alarm. The media will dutifully cover the story; the opposition parties may even call for the government to do something (don't count on it; they'll be focused on problems affecting demographics that actually vote), Christmas will arrive, everyone will stuff themselves with turkey and forget about the problem in time for the new year.

 

If student-funded lobbying organizations such as the Canadian Alliance of Student Associations and the Canadian Federation of Students wish to prove their relevance; they must become proactive in responding to the recession. They must seize the political opportunities these hard times have created. They must lobby for and succeed in securing relief for recent graduates included in any bill the government tables to reform Employment Insurance.

 

Now is the time to: get the student loan repayment "grace period" extended to one year; stop the accumulation of more debt during the "grace period" by making it interest free; convince the government to stop profiting from student loan interest by dropping the rate to one point above prime or lower; and push for the establishment of a secretariat for youth issues.

 

Tagged with poor, recession, interest, unemployment, student, employment, graduates, youth, repayment, loans, insurance | Comments (11) |