eature:

Panther Prints

Generation Debt: Education For What

by Marcella Munro.

The first half of this article ran in the last issue of the Panther Prints. The article was originally printed in Canadian Forum, Jan/Feb 1995. Reprinted with permission.

Education for What?

ICRP specifically -- and the govern- ment’s proposals in general have nothing to do with increasing access to university or college. They are aimed at ending the notion of shared responsibility for higher education, and placing the onus squarely on the individual. Like the rest of the Axworthy and Martin plans for social security reform, the planned changes in PSE aren’t rooted in any ethical or socially conscious vision of people’s needs or aspirations. They’re rooted in a specific view of the fture of the economy and the job market -- one in which social policy is merely a tool for producing the kind of worker the business community wants, rather than to promote dignity, equality or pluralism.

**[Axworthy’s document] is not a social policy document,’ says economist Harold Chormey. ‘‘It’s a finance document. It’s created by the economists in the Organi- zation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) and their friends here in Ottawa who then surround it with the flesh of social policy. But the whole thrust of it is that inflexible labour markets cause unemployment.’’

The ‘‘flexible’’ worker the OECD and business community seeks is one who will spend a lifetime in vocational training and retraining to ‘‘adapt’’ to business needs, not a critical thinker who has been to college or university and may come to question the value of having constantly to change skills because business demands it.

The OECD Jobs Study, an innocu- ous-looking publication that few have heard about, is quietly setting the agenda for the industrialized world’s version of structural adjustment. Its prescription for PSE? The authors call for ‘‘a better balance between post-secondary education and training’’ and lament the growth in academic studies, warning against a ‘‘surplus of academic qualifications’’. The OECD wants universi- ties and colleges to become mass training grounds to “‘prepare and stimulate students for,entrepreneurial activities’.

When you put this into the context of the OECD’s other suggestions -- which basically amount to forcing people into what they call “‘low-productivity, low-wage jobs’’ -- it becomes clear that the Liberal government’s plans have little to do with

allowing everyone access to PSE. While the Liberals tax poetic about universal educa- tion opportunity giving Canadians a ‘‘com-

petitive edge’’, they seem to be doing everything they can to discourage people from seeking a college or university educa- tion.

‘University and college are just not the options being put forward to people on UI or social assistance,’’ says Regent Park’s Seguin. ‘‘They are being told to take the provincial workfare-type programs, not to enroll in college or university courses.”’

The goal isn’t to let people have the choices and opportunities higher education offers, but to use the language of access as an excuse to keep PSE elitist, and force poor people into the low-paying training posi- tions oftered by programs such as NB Works in New Brunswick.

With its warning about a ‘‘surplus of academic qualifications’’, the OECD study makes it clear that in the ‘‘new global economy’’ the idea of learning for the sake of developing a better understanding of the world is passe. While education and training are at least rhetorically at the center of the policies the government is trying to promote, it’s not meant to expand the choices people will have, or their general knowledge. Education is merely viewed as the tool to shape the labour market to the demands of business. Gone is the idea of meaningful work, or even career choice. With 1.5 million Canadians unemployed and poverty on the rise, people are desperate enough to accept the lifeline of education and training, even if it will give them only unstable and unfulfilling jobs. The govern- ment knows this, and reminds Canadians repeatedly of it throughout the green paper. “Individuals will have an active role in creating their own career security, based on a willingness to expand and improve their employment skills. If they fail to do so,”’ warns the green paper, ‘‘they will risk being left behind in the workplace, thereby risking lower wages or job loss.

United We Stand

It’s true that a college or university education won’t guarantee anyone access to ajob any more. Today 42.4 percent of the unemployed have some post-secondary education, compared with 19 per cent back in 1980.

The government’s own figures show people with university or college degrees have longer lifetime earnings, and the chance of a better job at better wages, which is more than can be said of retraining or programs such as the federally financed Self-Sufficiency Project in British Columbia and New Brunswick. This program pro- vides businesses with subsidies to hire welfare recipients for short ‘‘training’’ periods. Although the government will

spend $30,000 to $37,000 a year on each person in the program, at the end there is no guarantee of a job. At least after university or college, you have a piece of paper, a larger fund of knowledge and greater self- confidence.

In arging for the privatization of PSE and for the rationalization of what’s taught and to whom, the federal government and others are throwing up their hands and surendering to the individualistic view of education and social policy that is widely prevalent in the United States. Jeffrey Simpson, in his Globe and Mail column, makes the inevitable comparison with the US as he lectures students to take more individual responsibility for education funding. What Simpson doesn’t mention is the way the US model of PSE has created a two-tiered system of education -- the elite ivy-league one for the rich, and an inferior one for the rest of society.

As with all social programs, the real comparisons in the realm of education are to be made with countries in Europe. The European nations have a wider view of both the importance of education and the value of social spending in general. And although - these countries are under as much economic pressure as Canada, they continue to see the funding of education as an important investment in the future. Most countries in Europe have very low -- some non-existent -- tuition fees. At the same time, the percentage of the budget for higher educa- tion going to student assistance and scholar- ships is much higher than in Canada. Holland, for example, spends nearly four times what Canada does to ensure its citizens have access to higher education.

The green paper implies we spend too much on higher education, and quotes a study saying Canada ranks first in spending among the OECD nations. If you look at government spending alone, however, we are in the middle of the pack, and our perstudent spending on higher education has been in decline for the past 20 years.

Although the federal government acts as if we have ‘no choice’’ but to allow federal block funding for PSE to disappear by the turn of the century, there are other options. At a time when more and more professors, students and parents have been calling for national standards for all levels of education, surely one of these options is for the federal government to take a larger role in the funding, quality, accessibility and direction of higher education.

The Canadian Federation of Students has argued for a minimum 3 percent higher education and research corporate tax, which, based on 1990 statistics, would raise $1.5 million dollars a year for PSE. Its Strategy

inept cilare area ae

For Change outlines step by step how federal government could eliminate ty fees, restore federal funding to PSE a create a better system of student aid changes to the tax system, all of whi would help improve both the accessib and the quality of higher education.

Although Axworthy seemed sh by the demonstration of 13,000 studer Parliament Hill on November 16, they weren’t telling him anything he didn’t already know. According to the gover ment’s own polls, the majority of Can still believe PSE is a valuable public g and something the government should spending more money on. In an Ang survey the government commissioned social security review last July, 69 per of respondents agreed that ‘spending 1 post-secondary education should be tained at any cost’’. An earlier poll do Vector Research for some unions sho that 63 per cent of Canadians are willi pay more taxes to educate young peop

As a result of more than a deca cuts, and driven by government obsesj with the deficit, Canadians are being : to question the core values that makes country -- values built into our social programs. Axworthy and the gove have picked PSE as their first target fo complete dismantling perhaps out of tl belief that education is perceived to be elitist. To succeed, however, he will | convince Canadians that their social p grams -- including education -- need t¢ sacrificed in order to bring down the 4 And they will not easily be persuaded that ‘‘need’’.

Accessible, affordable higher education is one of our core values as country, and it may be the one whose impending loss will most effectively Canadians behind the struggle to save our social programs. Instead of yellin the students, Axworthy should have li to what they were saying. While our economy has been weakened by free and high unemployment, people’s vali haven’t really changed. We aren’t red to surrender the social programs that, than anything else, make Canada a w0 ful country in which to live.

Marcella Munro is a former acti the Canadian Federation of Students lucky enough to be one of the 46% of Canadian women under 25 who have time job. She also works with the Ac! Canada Network.

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