The Education Bubble

"There has to be a large degree of moderation. It's not black and white. We don't want to develop education that only caters to what we perceive the labour market requires. That would be unconscionable. There's a great deal of value in pursuing knowledge for the sake of pursuing knowledge."
"What is unconscionable right now is that while we have a relatively high youth unemployment rate.... We don't have Albertans or Canadians with the skill sets required to fill the technical positions that are available. The province of Alberta has 75,000 temporary foreign workers who are, in many cases, filling very technical positions. They simply can't fill those jobs with local residents."
Deputy premier, Minister of Advanced Education, Thomas Lukaszuk

Across Canada government budgets are being strained by burdensome deficits, and government departments are instructed to cut back expenditures. Universities are finding themselves less generously endowed by tax funding, in a country that is proud of its subsidized education priorities. It is also a country that finds it is increasingly issuing temporary work permits for foreign workers to fill the work gaps made evident by a lack of Canadian applicants with suitable experience.

And this, at a time when youth unemployment numbers are higher than the average. When recent graduates find themselves competing for scarce employment in their specialized fields of endeavour, and when they find themselves unable any longer to keep making applications that elicit no response from prospective employers, and finally submit through necessity to taking on those proverbial service jobs that have been the mainstay of high school students on summer break.

Yet universities, according to many, are well enough funded. Students are paying a higher share of their tuition, and revenues collected per student have been steady for the past three decades in Ontario. Class sizes, however, are growing. More post-secondary enrolment by students eager to cash in on the promises inherent in social studies and widely trumpeted by government itself, showing that university graduates end up over their lifetime employment, earning far more in salaries than those with merely high school graduation levels.

University graduation now comes with fairly hefty indebtedness for many students. That student debt weighs heavily while the search for employment has become a fruitless one for far too many. "I think the cost really changed the calculus on this. A few decades ago, college was relatively cheap. You could tell people going to college that it was a form of self improvement. They could go to college and enjoy the experience and pay their way through waiting tables or tending bar. Now college costs a lot. Students [in the U.S.] borrow money and emerge with six-figure debts", adds University of Tennessee professor Glenn Harlan Reynolds.

The universal belief that a university education represented the great opportunity to be financially secure, promising high-value job delivery, in contrast to the jobs available to high school graduates moving directly to the workplace, bypassing higher education opportunities, has proven a disappointment. Everyone wants a white-collar job, one that will be pleasingly remunerative, one that graduates have anticipated will fulfill their expectations for full work satisfaction, utilizing all the work-related skills they have amassed as would-be professionals.

Critics point out the obvious, that Canadian students on graduation are not left with the high debt levels that burden their American counterparts. But they are onerous enough, when the prospects of good employment remain bleakly unavailable. The growing strain on finances is left where the greatest burden is, on the taxpayer, on government finances. It's truly crass to state that universities should be churning out students to fill positions where industry whatever it happens to be, needs them most.

Because, of course, universities are seats of knowledge acquisition, places of higher learning, and that, in and of itself is the goal, to become educated. Not educated specifically to fill a gap in certain sectors of the economic engine of a country.

Even if this is the practical reality of the situation.