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Skills mismatch may mean 1.5 million vacancies by 2016

Fernando Morales/The Globe and Mail/CP

On a recent February evening, Karl Eve received an emergency call from a restaurant owner in Canmore, Alta. The busy eatery had suddenly found itself with no hot water, even though the basement hot water tanks appeared to be working fine. A plumber with 10 years’ experience, Eve eventually traced the problem to a malfunctioning dishwasher and got the hot water flowing again—much to the owner’s relief.

It’s the sort of detective work Eve says he loves about his job. He also likes that his plumbing business, which he runs with his wife in nearby Exshaw, provides his family with a comfortable middle-class lifestyle. But it was a career he very nearly missed. Never a fan of textbooks, Eve ended up toiling in a southern Ontario gypsum mine after high school. It was only after moving to Alberta years later that he considered a career in the trades. A chance meeting at a church potluck led to a ride-along with a local plumber and, ultimately, an apprenticeship. “I discovered there was a lot to learn, especially when it came to math,” Eve says of his four years of training, which included eight weeks a year in a classroom. “The amount of education was very surprising to me, but in a positive way. I grasped it with both hands, so to speak.”

Eve’s story is more rare than it should be in Canada. Many consider the trades to be low-paying, go-nowhere jobs, if they consider them at all. But it’s a perception not grounded in reality, as Eve’s healthy hourly rate of $90 to $135 suggests. Nor is it one Canada can afford to maintain. Numerous studies warn Canada is facing a massive shortage of skilled workers over the next few decades as millions of baby boomers hit retirement age and exit the workforce.

Continue reading The future of jobs in Canada

Prof. Pettigrew says it’s worth considering

albertogp123/Flickr

The idea of an exam for new teachers, similar to the bar exam for would-be lawyers, has been floated in the U.S. and we should consider it too.

As it stands now, teachers generally require only the requisite degrees in order to earn certification in their province. Shouldn’t that be enough?

No. There are simply too many ways to game the system—taking the easiest courses one can find, finding the easiest sections of mandatory courses, inventing dead relatives to get exemptions and extensions—everyone knows the tricks—though not everyone uses them. It would be nice to know which are which. Besides, there is a world of difference between the student who passes with fifties and the student who passes with nineties. And degree status itself doesn’t indicate that. Even among honours graduates there can be a large difference in abilities.

The potential benefits of such an exam are numerous.

Continue reading Should teachers take a bar exam?

Injuries reported due to ice

A river raged through a section of downtown Montreal as a water main break Monday flooded a section of the city core.

The water barrelled down the slope of Mount Royal, with some people struggling to avoid being swept away by the mighty current.

The flood began spreading near McGill University just before rush hour, prompting traffic jams as police rerouted cars and people struggled to escape the area.

Some people wrapped themselves in garbage bags to protect their lower body from the ice-cold water as they crossed submerged streets.

At one intersection, where the flooded area was narrow, people moved a sidewalk bench and used it as a bridge to get to the middle of the street.

Philippe Whitford, a 38-year-old program analyst, gave new meaning to the term double-bagging: he wrapped himself in two layers of green plastic bags and made his way through the knee-deep water outside his building.

While he felt cold — the temperature was -9 C — he was grateful that he managed to stay dry.

His concerns quickly shifted to Tuesday morning. As the break was contained by mid-evening, and the water was largely cleared away, an emerging problem was ice buildup.

With a slippery film quickly forming across the area, parts of Ste-Catherine Street risk being temporarily transformed into an urban skating rink.

“It’s going to be a mess when this all freezes,” Whitford, who works for a finance company, said of Tuesday’s commute.

The streets thickened with ice as firemen stabbed at drain openings with pike poles to get the water to go in. There were also large road graders pushing the water around trying to get it to disperse.

City officials said the flood was caused by a 90-centimetre water main that broke at a construction site near downtown, and said they were working to fix the problem.

Police rerouted traffic because the cascade of water made the area extremely slippery as it turned to ice. Parts of two of Montreal’s main east-west arteries were closed to traffic — Rene-Levesque Boulevard and Sherbrooke Street.

Staff at McGill University were warned that several of the university’s buildings were flooded and evening classes were cancelled.

Water also trickled into a number of commercial establishments on Ste-Catherine Street.

City officials said the incident had not affected the quality of drinking water.

Mayor Michael Applebaum went to survey the cleanup operation.

He said the damage occurred mostly below street level.

A steady stream of water poured into underground parking garages, and Applebaum said water had to be pumped out of the Place Ville Marie, a major office complex.

“The damage is mostly damage where we have basements where there’s underground parking lots,” he said as he stood near a water-logged intersection, as firefighters cleared clogged sewers and front-end loaders scooped up water.

Two minor injuries were reported, as of 7 p.m. The local ambulance service said the injuries occurred when people slipped and fell.

One man who was rushing to catch a bus said he saw the cascading water push people along as they waded through.

Another man, Faz Khan, said he watched the spectacle from his office window.

“McTavish (Street) was completely flooded and nobody could cross past Sherbrooke,” Khan said. “People had water up to their knees at one point…. It was pretty bad.”

—Peter Rakobowchuk and Nelson Wyatt

Why a generation of well-educated Canadians has no future

Melanie Cullins (Chad Hipolito for Maclean's)

Melanie Cullins is no pipe dreamer. She chose a vocation that, by unanimous opinion, represented a path to steady employment—teaching English as a second language to the thousands of immigrants pouring into B.C., a good many of whom, the experts predicted, would be making their way to Victoria, where she grew up and wished to make a home. That was back in the early 2000s, when opportunities for the young and industrious appeared unlimited. A rewarding career seemed within reach for all.

Cullins’s degree in applied linguistics was the gold standard of ESL qualifications. But she graduated in the thick of the 2008 financial meltdown, and the entry-level position she imagined would launch her career never materialized. Governments cut back on language transition programs. Resumés piled up in recruitment offices. Her calls to program directors went unanswered. “For me, that was a huge blow,” she says. “I had almost perfect performance reviews from my practicums, but I couldn’t even get an interview. You start to wonder: what’s wrong with me?”

Continue reading The new underclass

Puppy parties, NHL lockout and the plot to kill Bieber

Therapy dogs in Hawaii (Photo: Beverly & Pack on Flickr)

1. If you’ve fallen into an exam stress hole and your university doesn’t offer the burgeoning (and cute) service of dog therapy, watch this video – you can’t possibly be in a bad mood after watching a man high-five a Labradoodle. CBC Edmonton reports that the University of Alberta is the latest Canadian school jumping on the dog therapy wagon – and it’s wildly popular. Students lined up down the hallway for a chance to play with the pups, and a university official told CBC they hope to make the visits an ongoing program throughout the year.

2. In a bid to improve the college experience for LGBT students, the AP reports that the University of Iowa has become the first U.S. public university to pose options question about sexual orientation and gender on its application. The application asks students whether they “identify with the LGBTQ Community” among other optional questions, data the university hopes to use to gauge how well LGBT students feel supported. If a student answers yes to the question, Iowa’s admissions office will also e-mail them with information on housing options and campus resources.The AP reports that the  only other U.S. college to track LGBT students is Elmhurst College, a private liberal-arts school in suburban Chicago.

Continue reading What students are talking about today (December 13th edition)

‘Better’ schools wouldn’t take him. Now, he’s a master.

John Fraser (Photo by Jessica Darmanin)

John Fraser is master of Massey College at the University of Toronto. His advice first appeared in the 2013 Maclean’s University Rankings.

The agony of “getting it right” when choosing a university to kick off the higher academic experience in life is one I never had the privilege of experiencing. I had only three humble criteria: (1) is there a university that would actually take me, (2) could I afford it, and (3) please, dear God, can there be enough distance between my home in Toronto and this mythical, inexpensive place of higher learning—preferably with water in between?

Those are not generally the concerns of either parents or students, but variations on those themes are actually not a bad way to figure out where to go. The endless searching for exactly the right high-profile place, the relentless reliance on university evaluation guides (including the highly popular one this magazine puts out every year), the phone calls to well-connected friends, the trauma visited on the victim-students, the over-the-top ambitions of concerned parents: all these ingredients can add up to a roiling broth whose only parallel seems to be the hysteria of a bride’s mother the day before the wedding.

Continue reading Poor grades in high school? Relax.

The Point Grill’s food is mostly worth it, but skip the starter

The 2013 Maclean’s University Rankings includes an examination of the dining on Canadian campuses. We found healthier options than ever, but also a new problem—high prices.

Maclean’s On Campus is continuing the conversation by having students review food on their campuses and showing what it costs to dine. If you’re a student, you can help. Send us a review of the food on your campus. Keep your receipts. If we publish it, we’ll reimburse you.

Here is the first entry in our Campus Eats series of reviews. It’s worth noting that The Point is UBC’s fine dining restaurant; there are many more affordable options nearby. From Zafira Rajan:

The Point Grill at the University of British Columbia
3.5 stars out five
Total Price: $51.20

Continue reading Campus Eats: University of British Columbia

Inside the war against risky drinking on campus

Mark Peterson/Redux

From the 2013 Maclean’s University Rankings

When outraged members of Pi Kappa Alpha at the University of Tennessee called a news conference in September to protest the suspension of their fraternity due to allegations of strange and excessive alcohol abuse, two words sprang to mind: Animal House. The news conference, immortalized on YouTube, is so unintentionally bizarre that it could be mistaken for an outtake from the subversive 1978 frat-boy comedy that launched a million toga parties and countless hangovers. The press conference—featuring a bow-tied, dead-serious Southern lawyer backed by an angelic legion of fraternity members in their Sunday suits—was called to refute allegations that one of their own, 20-year-old Alexander P. Broughton, had indulged in “butt-chugging” massive quantities of wine. While there was no denying that Broughton was hospitalized with alcohol poisoning after a night of fraternity drinking games, the idea of an alcohol enema is “repulsive” to Broughton, his lawyer said. “He is a straight man.”

Continue reading Battling the binge

Our 132-page guide to Canada’s top schools is out now

Masters student Theo Mlynowski examines core samples at the University of Northern British Columbia (Photo by Simon Hayter)

The 22nd annual Maclean’s University Rankings issue—the holy book for anyone planning their education in Canada—is now available on newsstands and tablets.

The 2013 issue, our biggest-ever, features 132 pages of charts, stories and advice designed to help future students choose the right school, while sparking conversations on the quality of the post-secondary experience from the size of classes to the cost of textbooks.

The issue also offers a peek inside campus life from coast to coast, including an examination of the viral videos phenomenon, a deeper look at the scourge of drinking, Emma Teitel on fraternities, the college advantage and pages more. There are online extras, too, like photo tours of life at 24 campuses.

And, of course, the issue features the 22nd annual rankings.

Continue reading The 2013 Maclean’s University Rankings

Students are doing extraordinary things with video cameras

School Spirit at Western University (Jessica Darmanin)

From the 2013 Maclean’s University Rankings

Andrew Cohen sat near the window of a south Vancouver coffee house, scribbling notes on flashcards to study for an urban geography mid-term. The fourth-year University of British Columbia student grew restive, so, naturally, he took to watching YouTube videos.

Before long, he came upon a video made by students at the University of Victoria. It was a so-called lip dub, a style of video in which students dance and mouth the words to a popular song in an enthusiastic show of school pride. Cohen put his books away within seconds.

“I stopped studying,” recalls Cohen more than a year later. Now 22 and done school, what he saw that day inspired him to become a filmmaker in Vancouver. “That totally changed my life.” He immediately started planning his own lip dub for UBC.

CLICK TO WATCH THE TOP 10 VIRAL VIDEOS BY CANADIAN STUDENTS

Continue reading Don’t curb your enthusiasm