Photo: Photodisc
Photo: Photodisc
Comment: Joey Coleman on how PhDs don't matter
Canada shines when it comes to educating youngsters. If only it could compete with its peers in higher education.
For the 10th year running, the Conference Board of Canada gave Canada a D grade for educating and graduating PhD students: Canada ranked last of 17 “peer countries” reviewed in the board's annual report card.
Canada was one of several countries to get a D, but it ranked the lowest out of all of them: It saw 209 people complete PhDs out of every 100,000 between the ages of 25 and 29 – below the United States, at 289 people, France at 259 and Japan at 210.
“Canada's graduation rate of doctoral students is strikingly low compared with its performance on other measures of education completion (high school, college, and university) and compared with its peers,” the report states.
In other areas Canada performed well: It improved its overall “education and skills” performance to an A from a B last year. Canada came second only to the United States in high-school completion, and was ranked first out of all 17 countries for college graduates.
But when it comes to higher education, Canada is falling behind: It ranked fifth out of 17 for university graduation, and dead last in churning out doctoral students.
Canada's poor PhD record “does not bode well for the future,” the report notes. “The failure to fund world-class universities is one explanation for Canada's comparative weaknesses in high-level academic achievement—and its associated weaknesses in innovation.”
Over the past several years, Canada's PhD ranking has actually declined.
This laggard status points, the report says, to systemic deficiencies in Canadian higher education that translates to multiple sectors.
“Canada's education system simply does not stimulate enough students to complete post-graduate degrees, especially in the science and technical disciplines that underpin innovation, because funding is too widely dispersed among an expanding number of universities,” the report states.
“While Canada has an above-average rate of high-school, college, and university completion ? it does not work as well for the more educated and innovative people at the high-end of the spectrum. Consequently, Canada has been able to fund only a handful of world-class research universities that attract talented people to study in Canada at the doctoral level.”
There's also less pay and employment incentive for Canadian students to pursue doctoral education: A 2007 report by the federal government noted that executives at Canadian companies are far less likely to have university degrees than at American companies.
“Despite the importance of Ph.D. graduates to innovation,” the Conference Board report states, “Canada's private sector does not provide strong enough incentives for students to strive for advanced science and technology skills and for business management skills. Compared to firms in the U.S., Canadian firms across most industries hire fewer Ph.D. graduates and pay them less.”
It all feeds into what many have identified as Canada's difficulty retaining its brightest stars, who often leave for greener pastures that offer more incentives for excellence, in terms of both education and careers. A report commissioned by Toronto's City Summit Alliance last year found people who leave Canada to work or study aren't easily enticed back.
“Highly skilled people are key to the creation, commercialization, and diffusion of innovation. Doctorate holders are not only the most qualified in terms of educational attainment, but they are also specifically trained to conduct research.”
