Federal leaders: here’s some education advice
Dear Stephen, Michael and Jack,
Hi guys. Look, the next federal budget is going to have to be a doozy for cuts, given our fiscal situation, and everyone understands that Stephen would probably prefer to go to the voters and try one last time to get a majority before lowering the boom. That means it's more than likely we'll have an election in the fall - before October, if the Conservatives wish to avoid answering questions about the Auditor General's report on the effectiveness of the stimulus spending.
That makes this summer platform-writing time for all three of you. As a public service, I'm here to offer you all some free advice when it comes to drafting the bits of your platform related to post-secondary education (PSE) and innovation.
Let's start with the issue of access to education.
First, scratch anything that vaguely resembles a policy on tuition fees. No credible research shows tuition to have a substantial impact on access, and, in any case, it is entirely a matter of provincial jurisdictions.
Even policies like paying provinces to reduce fees (NDP policy from 1997 to 2006) or rebating fees to students (Liberal policy in 2006) have weird distributional consequences because they would involve vastly different subsidies to different provinces, based on existing tuition.
Money in student aid is a slightly more promising idea because at least it's targeted. But you might want to keep your powder dry on this one. Student aid costs are already set to rise significantly over the next few years as interest rates rise ... and the jury is still out on whether the recently-introduced Canada Student Grants are going to cost what was originally predicted or if the recession and lax eligibility criteria will blow the lid off costs.
A closely-related idea to increased student aid is that of giving "completion grants" for apprentices, which if you really think about it, is a massive waste of money. The main reasons apprentices don't finish their training is because they can make too much money without completing (in boom times) or because they can't find get enough work hours to complete (in bust times). Either way, giving completers a couple of thousand dollars isn't going to change outcomes; in good times the incentives of work are simply too big for a couple of thousand dollars to matter, and in bad times, the incentive doesn't mean anything if they can't find work.
If it is access that's bothering you and you want to do something useful, then concentrate on individuals with the greatest challenges in reaching PSE: Aboriginal students and lower-income inner-city youth. And concentrate on the barriers that are most serious: inadequate academic preparation and weak academic motivation (the American GEAR UP program is not a bad model for how to do this in a federal system). These students will eventually need money, too, of course, but existing student aid programs are likely strong enough and generous enough to deal with that, so avoid the temptation to enrich student aid on that account. Focus on the achievement and aspirations and you'll make a real difference.
If you absolutely must pour money into student aid, do yourself a favour and make sure it's cost-neutral; whatever you stick into student aid, you should take away from education and textbook tax credits. These cost a tremendous amount of money and achieve absolutely nothing. Everyone knows they only exist because they are a cheap and convenient way for the federal government to shovel money to the middle class without having to deal with the provinces. Cutting these would offend no one in the sector; if you cut them and redistributed the funds elsewhere in education, you would win plaudits.
Turning to research - well, what can I say? You more or less all agree on the essentials, anyway. We have a granting council system that works pretty well (some of you seem to enjoy micromanaging the system more than others, but that's as may be), which could use a little more funding but isn't wildly out of whack. Everyone seems to like our human-capital increasing programs - the Research Chairs and the new Excellence Chairs, so don't mess with those.
The Canada Foundation for Innovation is a well-loved method of handing out funds for research infrastructure - though with operating budgets strained, you may find that universities aren't quite as eager these days to expand their operating costs with new buildings.
The problem here, though, is one of using policy to buy votes versus using it to achieve something useful. We all know you love a ribbon cutting, and everyone in the sector does their best to satisfy you on that. But what the sector desperately needs are things that are unglamorous: more money for research overhead, reducing the paperwork burden on research grants - that kind of thing. If you can show the sector that you are serious about these kinds of things, they'll assume you're serious; if you insist on the ribbon-cutting stuff, they'll know you're just posing.
But now let me turn to the most important question of all - one so important and basic that the sector itself is reluctant to face it head on. You know that we're facing a demographic time-bomb: The Canadian labour force will stop growing in 2016, while the number of over-65s is set to triple by 2030. This means taxpayers are going to have an increasing burden for pensions and health care. The only way to relieve that burden is to increase the productivity of Canadian workers.
A lot of the productivity increase is going to have to do with changes in regulatory and competition policies, but it also has to do with education. We need to better understand how curricula can be altered such that graduates can generate the extra productivity we will need to generate the money required to maintain our standard of living. Long term, this isn't just the key issue: it's the only issue. And right now, frighteningly, no one has any idea how to approach the issue.
What I've just described must, I know, be terribly unappetizing for you politically - an issue where there are no simple answers and which, in any case, lies almost entirely within provincial jurisdiction. Nevertheless, any medium-term prosperity plan that doesn't get to grips with this issue is going to be doomed to failure. And the provinces are going to be struggling for answers, too - they may welcome a partner in Ottawa if the approach is handled sensitively.
The best solution here is probably a revival of an agency not entirely dissimilar to the Canadian Council on Learning (CCL). Not CCL exactly, because that well has been poisoned. What is needed is something with a much narrower mandate (e.g. provides and tests a range of possible educational innovations that can raise productivity and growth rates) than CCL, which includes very significant participation of the provinces and educational institutions. It should not presume to issue definitive "orders" about what works and what doesn't, but rather try to provide a variety of solutions that might work in different systems. Finally, it should engage large numbers of stakeholders (especially schools, colleges and universities) in deep debates about the myriad ways in which curricula might be reformed.
In sum, what all three of you need to decide is whether your PSE policies are going to be about buying votes or about actually improving Canada. The latter is much tougher to do, not least of all because of our country's federal nature. But if any of you can actually get to grips with these tough problems, you'll get serious respect from the community.
Jack, Michael, Stephen: by your promises shall we know ye. Don't disappoint us.
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| 
ALEX USHER
Comments
And an even more forward looking demographic “time bomb” is what are we going to do with all of this massively expanded capacity in the universities in 10-15 years as the 18-28yr- old age group declines in number. School boards across the nation are struggling with enrollment decline at the elementary level, isn't it logical that this will hit the universities in a few years?
I foresee our universities dropping their entry requirements even further to keep "bums in seats"; So much for quality in post-secondary education!
This is also a good question, Joel, though I think it lies a bit more squarely in provincial jurisdiction.
Can't help noticing the high number of tweets (in this blog, anything above "zero" is high) from people making snarky comments about my views on access and tuition. It's a public blog, guys - you're welcome to present contrary views here. I happen to think the evidence that has built up over the last ten years is pretty strong - that in Canada, the relationship between tuition and enrolment is close enough to nil as makes no odds, and that finances generally are a smaller barrier than some others. However, I'm always happy to have anyone present some alternative evidence, or an alternative reading of existing evidence. If you think you can defend your position, go right ahead and post.
I have seen several articles recently that have mentioned "increasing the productivity of Canadian workers." What does this really mean? That workers need to do more? That they need to be more efficient in what do? Are we talking about technological efficiencies? Of something else all together?
I would be interested in hearing from others who are familiar this this area.
Hi Katherine. The term "labour productivity" is a way of measuring output per hour worked.
Think of it this way: your output is a combination of your effort (which many people think can be increased through incentives, such as increasing your net pay by lowering tax rates), your abilities (which can be enhanced through education), your tools (which can be enhanced through investments in up-to-date tools) and the degree to which your workplace is optimized to make sure everyone is working as a team (sometimes called "social technology") to maximise everyone's combined efforts.
Lots of things therefore affect productivity - education, taxes (they should be low on capital so people will invest in equipment), and regulations which increase the cost of factors of production (e.g. marketing boards in agriculture, restrictions on foregin companies in telecoms).
In the long run, every country's income is ultimately dependent on labour productivity. If it is increasing, chances are the country will be more prosperous; if it is decreasing, chances are the country will be in decline. Canada's performance in the last deacde or so has been middling at best, leading a lot of people to worry about the future. The problem is, there's not a lot of consensus about what's caused the slowdown, which makes adopting new policies more difficult.
Katherine: There is a very interesting comment by "Joel" on the "University ‘innovation’ hasn’t produced hoped-for benefits" blog by Alex Usher (May 23, 2010 at 5:38 AM) regarding innovation and productivity improvements.
It is certainly worth a read.
Seeing as how education is not a priority in this country, and many of us students from poor backgrounds are stuck working two jobs during the school year, at the expensive of our grades, the potential of graduate school and our sanity. bI am left to wonder, why should I work in Canada upon graduation? If my education is not important enough to fund, (and don't kid yourself about those Canada access grants, an asthmatic studying in Toronto can hope to live in a moldy basement on the amount of help we receive in interest-bearing loans) why is the healthcare of baby boomer's left on our shoulders?
I think the fall back is going to be a lot bigger than you realise. The smart kids, the ones who now can't go to grad school, we're going to take our engineering degrees and go elsewhere. We're much too bitter and depressed after four years of misery and exhaustion.
An article published June 18'10 in Toronto Star about schools-based outreach which improved literacy scores and secondary school graduation rates in an identified "at risk" newcomer neighbourhood, thereby addressing 2of8 indicators of the Ontario government Poverty Reduction Strategy. Read it here: http://www.thestar.com/yourcitymycity/article/825121--should-students-helping-students-lead-to-free-tuition
The project builds a dataset for a conversation to create a new universal federal program where peer-tutor hours create post-secondary tuition offsets.
Background info available here: http://wiki.theagenda.tvo.org/User:CitizenApprenticeship
A sequel project to replicate results in two additional priorty neighbourhoods in Peel District School Board is pending Ontario Ministry of Education grant approval for 2010-11.
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