Double-team degrees

MARLENE HABIB

Sept. 03, 2008 03:44 PM EDT

As Kirsten Walker hits the books and the basketball court in Charlottetown, the teen basketball whiz is striving for a double slam dunk — to complete college while working toward her bachelor of arts.

Kirsten Walker

Holland College ‘gave me the option to continue my postsecondary education to university,’ says Kirsten Walker, who is a member of the school’s women’s basketball team.

Kirsten Walker

Holland College ‘gave me the option to continue my postsecondary education to university,’ says Kirsten Walker, who is a member of the school’s women’s basketball team.

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Ms. Walker is enrolled this year in the sport and leisure-management program at Holland College, after which she'll move to the University of Prince Edward Island, thanks to a joint degree-granting program between the two schools. For her, it was the most practical route to realizing her likely career goal — to become a teacher in sports and medicine.

"The [college] program seemed to offer different courses that interested me and also gave me the option to continue my post-secondary education to university," says Ms. Walker, an 18-year-old rookie on the Holland Hurricanes women's basketball team.

Unlike Ms. Walker, Ontario resident Bill Hill had a college diploma and a wealth of work experience behind him before he took on his next educational challenge. But he, too, found the answer in a joint degree program.

Earlier this year, the 44-year-old was among the first crop of graduates of the bachelor of social work program, a partnership between First Nations Technical Institute, an aboriginal-owned, postsecondary institute in Tyendinaga Mohawk Territory near Belleville, Ont., and Ryerson University in Toronto.

"This program, the way it was set up, allowed me to become a social worker and remain a first nations person — I didn't have to compromise either," says Mr. Hill, a married father of two who is now a social worker with Regional Mental Health Care London in southwestern Ontario.

"I learned how to be a social worker, but I learned how to do it as an aboriginal person. It allowed me to maintain my full-time employment and apply my education to my work," adds Mr. Hill, who was among 13 students who took part in a graduation ceremony in June that featured a smudging and drumming ceremony.

Over the past decade, Canada's postsecondary school system has increasingly morphed into a new type of education, one that melds college and university traditions.

Community colleges, technical and vocational institutes — many founded during the economic boom of the 1960s to address the needs of a rapidly expanding manufacturing and service economy — now offer hybrid or joint degree programs.

Many take part in so-called articulation agreements, involving credit transfers between educational institutions. Then there are "two-and-two agreements," in which two-year college diplomas are recognized as the first two years of a university degree.

The baccalaureate boom is driven by factors including demand by students and professional groups for loftier credentials, government agendas, the higher cost of education, and the shift toward life-long learning.

Holland College, for example, has several articulation agreements, including with Canadian universities, a culinary school in Switzerland and a couple of universities in the United States. In its bachelor of business in tourism and hospitality program, students spend two years at Holland in certain programs such as sport and leisure management, and two years at UPEI.

"Increasingly, our students are looking for life-long learning opportunities," says Michael O'Grady, vice-president, innovation, enterprise and strategic development at Holland College.

"These degree programs allow students to get the applied learning of a college setting with the more traditional academic preparation of university."

Despite the key role that colleges play in granting diplomas and certificates that equip students for the work force, obtaining a degree remains a key educational goal, according to a survey of more than 46,000 college and institute students released in August.

The study, a joint effort by the Ottawa-based Association of Canadian Community Colleges and Human Resources and Social Development Canada, found that 90 per cent of respondents were focused on entering a specific occupation and 42 per cent viewed college and institute programs as a stepping stone to university.

Wyatt Inman, co-ordinator of Holland College's sport and leisure program and a teacher of sport-science core courses, says joint degree programs have grown out of competitive necessity.

"Definitely in our society, there's still a higher-recognition postsecondary certificate — the degree," he says. "Pay rates are even based on it, so getting a degree allows graduates to maximize their financial goals."

The reasons why students choose colleges over universities to get their degrees, and the degree-granting options available, are as varied as the schools and cities where they're offered.

The government of Ontario is increasingly funding and encouraging colleges to develop degree-granting programs, usually in partnership with universities and in high-demand areas such as nursing, environmental studies and business.

Among the hybrid programs, Toronto's Humber College describes its bachelor of applied music degree as the only one of its kind in North America. It focuses on contemporary music (jazz, pop, world music, rhythm and blues), delivers a comprehensive education in performance-composition and music production, and features business and entrepreneurial studies.

The four-year program also includes workshops and clinics with the music-degree faculty, as well as world-class musicians such as Canadians Renee Rosnes, a pianist and composer, and trombonist-composer Rob McConnell. It prepares grads for careers in areas such as performing, composing, arranging, songwriting and producing, and clinician.

In another novel alliance, Ontario's Trent University and Fleming College will offer a joint bachelor of science honours and diploma program in ecological restoration — the recovery of damaged, degraded or destroyed ecosystems. The new program will accept 30 students in the fall of 2008; students will complete the first two years at a Fleming College campus in Lindsay, and attend Trent in Peterborough for the third and fourth years.

Gerry Brown is president of the Ottawa-based Association of Canadian Community Colleges, representing about 150 institutions attended by about 1.5 million students. He says cost is a prime factor influencing students' degree choices.

"You can go to a community college in your region where it's cheaper because you can study while staying at home, and then move on to universities in the last two or three years of the program because of special transfer arrangements," he says.

Mr. Brown also cites the fact that colleges are generally less expensive than universities; the average for Canadian residents is about $2,000 a year for college study, compared with about $5,000 for two university semesters.

"The key word is relevance," says Mr. O'Grady, of Holland College, about student goals in choosing a program. "The postsecondary student is much more discriminating in choosing a program, and looking at its relevance for their career and other goals."

Ms. Walker chose the Holland College/UPEI degree route because she wanted to stay close to home and be part of a program that allows students to put theory into practise.

She and the 80 other students in the two-year college sports and leisure management program get a blend of business, kinesiology, recreational and outdoor training, including learning to survive outdoors. They must also put in hundreds of hours working in the community, such as at camps and YMCAs, and then move on to UPEI, or another university with an agreement with Holland College.

"When I chose this program, I based it on the fact that I have always been involved in sports and am a very active person in general," adds Ms. Walker. "This program seemed to offer different courses that interested me and also gave me the option to continue my postsecondary education through university."

The "relevance" factor was also crucial for Mr. Hill and for Brenda Thomas, a 47-year-old mother of two who is in her final year of the FNTI-Ryerson bachelor of social work program. Most of the students in the four-year program are older, have families and are already employed in social work.

The program's 13 courses — including research and field placements in social services agencies — are taught in intensive, week-long sessions several times a year in London, Ont., where students are housed at the University of Western Ontario. Areas of study include law and justice, community conflict resolution, coping with community trauma, public administration and child abuse.

"This [program] is an excellent opportunity for our people, because a regular degree program at a university is developed outside our cultural framework," says Ms. Thomas, who has an 18-year-old daughter and 10-year-old son.

She earned a social services worker diploma from Mohawk College in Brantford in 1995, and now lives on the first nations reserve in the southwestern Ontario city, where she works in community development with the Children's Aid Society.

Ms. Thomas plans to complete the requisite 546 hours of field work, graduate in 2009 and work in her aboriginal community with people "who have been through historical trauma, and have unique mental, physical and emotional needs."

"One of the benefits of this program is it's a cross-cultural exchange," notes Ben Carniol, a professor of social work and a project co-ordinator for the program. "As graduates return to their communities, they bring with them not only the practical part of the hands-on research, but a renewed confidence in their own cultural traditions."

Special to The Globe and Mail

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