Student Issues
Students want jobs, and universities are listening
But which schools are turning out the most employable grads? No one really knows.
When John Mortimer was a young man in the late 1930s in England, he told his father he wanted to study to be an actor. Or—even better!—a writer. His father was not impressed. “My dear boy, have some consideration for your unfortunate wife,” Mortimer senior said. “You’ll be sitting around the house all day wearing a dressing gown, brewing tea and stumped for words. You’ll be far better off in the Law. That’s the great thing about the Law, it gets you out of the house.”
The arm-wrestle over the purpose of a university education is hardly new. Is it to follow your passion, young Mortimer, to wherever that may lead? Or is it to train for a brilliant and lucrative career? What is new, 70 years after the famous son and his father bandied over the breakfast table, is that the debate has become a whole lot more urgent.
Consider the numbers: more than a quarter of a million Canadian university students are about to graduate into the workforce this spring. Yet studies show that 50 per cent of Canadian arts and science grads are working jobs that don’t require a university credential two years after graduation. The average B.A. or a B.Sc. is not trained in any particular skill. And even if they were, potential students and potential employers don’t have any way of knowing which skills a particular degree program teaches. Indira Samarasekera, president of the University of Alberta, says it’s “absolutely critical” that universities track where their grads are working—but very few do. Which schools are turning out the most employable grads? No one really knows.
Continue reading Students want jobs, and universities are listening
Now we don’t have to worry
Mom, dad, big brother and sister—everyone was scrimping to keep Jessica Holman in university. The Maclean’s $20,000 scholarship changed all that.
Jessica Holman almost didn’t apply to university. Once accepted, she almost didn’t go. Even after a successful first semester of social work at Carleton University, she often felt she should be working instead of studying. The thing constantly nagging at her? Money.
That’s why Holman started crying when a woman from Maclean’s told her that she’d won the $20,000 scholarship contest, which was part of our 20th Rankings Issue celebration. She was chosen at random from more than 27,000 entries. “Maclean’s didn’t know how badly my family needs the money, so it’s kind of astonishing that we were the ones who won,” says Holman. “Now we don’t have to worry about whether or not I can go back to school next year.”
When she says “we,” she means her entire family back in Oakville, Ont. Her mom, dad—even her older brother and sister—are all scrimping and saving to help her pay for school. Her experience is a good reminder of how much many Canadian families sacrifice to send their kids to university. All in, it now costs roughly $80,000 for a four-year undergraduate degree, according to TD Economics. For many families, it’s a struggle to put even one child through school.
Job interview? Here are some hints
When they say… ‘Tell us about yourself,’ they don’t really mean it
Gregg Blachford, director of career planning at McGill University, says the winning formula for job interviews is to “know yourself, know the employer, and make the match.”
Know yourself: This is what prevents you from falling into stream-of-consciousness mode when asked, “so… tell me about yourself.” Nobody wants to know where you grew up and nobody’s interested in where you graduated from—they already gleaned those details from your resumé. That approach is akin to trying to sell a vacuum cleaner by reading the instruction manual out loud. Instead, talk about what makes you different from the tens, if not hundreds, of other qualified recent grads. The secret here is the old literary adage, “show, don’t tell.” For example, telling your interviewers that you are “very organized,” says Blachford, will only elicit a vacant stare. Instead, offer an achievement: “When I was president of the economics club, I cut costs by reorganizing the archives.”
Another human-resources favourite question is: “What is your greatest weakness?” One way to dodge the greatest-weakness bullet is to talk about a shortcoming you’ve beaten. Mark Barry, vice-president of human resources at Earl’s Restaurants, says his favourite response came from a candidate who admitted to flunking calculus in university, but hired a tutor, took the class again, and passed. It showed resilience. He was hired.
Do-it-yourselfism
Cheap loans and tight job prospects create a new crop of entrepreneurs
After graduating from the University of Western Ontario in 2004, long-time friends Joe Facciolo and Skai Dalziel, both from Barrie, Ont., set off to travel the world. By the time they came home, in 2008, the job market had toughened considerably. “I was looking for work in alternative energy, but nothing really materialized,” says Dalziel, 30. Chatting about their travels, and how hard it was to find a good restaurant in a new city, the two friends were seized by a business idea. “We said, we’re young and we don’t have a lot of responsibility,” Dalziel says. “We figured it was a good time to give it a go.”
That fall, they moved to Whistler, B.C., where they knew the tourism market was strong. By November, Whistler Tasting Tours—which provides guided tours that visit some of Whistler’s best restaurants, providing a multi-course dinner in one evening—was born. “One of the biggest challenges was securing financing,” Dalziel says. “Banks weren’t interested in getting involved.” The Canadian Youth Business Foundation (CYBF), a charitable organization that works with entrepreneurs aged 18 to 34, gave them a $15,000 loan, and Whistler Tasting Tours was profitable within its first year; now they’re talking about branching out to other locations. Running a business, “you’re letting go of your social life,” he says. “But it’s really rewarding.”
Facciolo and Dalziel are two of countless twentysomethings who’ve avoided a more traditional career path, launching their own business instead of working for somebody else. Driven by a tight job market, the number of tools available online, and a growing sense of do-it-yourselfism, entrepreneurship is booming among students and recent grads. And with role models like Mark Zuckerberg, the 26-year-old billionaire founder of Facebook, they’re in good company.
The college advantage
University inspired them to change the world. College gave them the tools to do it.
University graduates are tossing their mortarboards in the air, sliding their degrees into the filing cabinet—and then heading straight to college. In Ontario, applications for postgraduate diploma programs (which accept only university grads) have jumped 21 per cent since 2007. In Atlantic Canada and Western Canada, college programs that recruited high school grads a decade ago have become de facto postgrads with most applicants already holding degrees. Dianne Twombly, the manager of York University’s career centre, has noticed the trend on her campus, too, and she thinks she understands why. “As more and more students get bachelor’s degrees, postgrads are a way to distinguish yourself—a way to get an edge.” York has seen so much interest, it’s offering at least one postgrad workshop each month.
Aisling Nolan, a 27-year-old philosophy graduate of McMaster University in Hamilton, Ont., attended university and then college, rather than a master’s program. Her university degree helped her understand what she wants to do with her life—help people overseas. Once she knew that, she was ready for the one-year college certificate in international development from Humber College, because it promised practical skills and connections to put her plan into action.
Proud to be retail
Ambitious grads find big rewards—in between toys and housewares
Loblaw, Wal-Mart, L’Oréal and Abercrombie & Fitch are lacing up their gloves and pounding banks, hotels and financial service firms in the perennial grudge match to entice the world’s top graduates. They’re the scrappy underdogs going up against the established heavyweight champions, but now they’re employing the same secret weapon that’s been up the sleeves of the other industries for years—manager-in-training programs.
“In an environment where Loblaw is competing with Wal-Mart, Canadian Tire, Shoppers Drug Mart and, soon, Target, there’s no room for complacency. It’s a ruthlessly competitive landscape,” says Jeff Muzzerall, director of the Corporate Connections Centre at the University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Management. “Now is a wonderful opportunity for retail to showcase itself.”
Alix Carter never expected her dream HR job to involve walking the aisles of a grocery store or asking a group of colleagues huddled between rows of frozen pizza and granola bars trivia about the founding of the company. But now, she says, she wouldn’t have it any other way.
“A lot of people might see retail and get scared away,” she says. Grad@Loblaw “showcased an industry that is overlooked by a lot of graduates.”
Get me a job—or give me my money back
Should schools be in the business of turning out employable grads?
Carlie Deneiko is from the tiny town of Watrous, Sask. (population 1,800), more than an hour’s drive southeast of Saskatoon. As a teen, she dreamed of travelling the world, but her priorities are shifting. “I’ve got a boyfriend, and I’m really settled,” says Deneiko, 20, a student in the faculty of education at the University of Regina. “It’s becoming more important to me to get a job.”
Deneiko’s not too worried: her education comes with a job guarantee. She’s one of 355 students enrolled in a new program at the University of Regina that promises students they’ll land a job—in their chosen field—within six months of graduation. If they don’t, the university gives them another year of tuition for free. The UR Guarantee has other bells and whistles (like internships and work programs), but for Deneiko, it’s that extra year of free tuition that pulled her in. “If I don’t get a job, I’m coming back to get my special education certificate,” she says.
Since it launched in September, the UR Guarantee has been incredibly popular. Enrolment in the program, which is open to all first-year students, has already jumped by 24 per cent, says president Vianne Timmons. “We looked at students’ motivation for attending university,” she says, “and realized they’re looking at a degree primarily as a launching pad for a career.”
Universities have long been seen as ivory towers, leaving job training to colleges and vocational programs, but that’s changing fast. “It’s not the old, green college on the hill anymore,” says Lloyd Axworthy, president of the University of Winnipeg. “The marketplace has changed,” adds Ronald Bordessa, president of the University of Ontario Institute of Technology (UOIT). “Some universities have moved quickly. Others haven’t, and are having greater difficulty attracting students.”
Regina isn’t the only university in the job guarantee business—tiny Sainte-Anne in Church Point, N.S., offers its education and business graduates free tuition if they haven’t found work after four months. It’s a radical approach—but some schools don’t even track how many graduates go on to get jobs in their field. Monitoring this is “absolutely critical,” says University of Alberta president Indira Samarasekera. “If your students are not finding employment, it means that employers are not finding them competitive.” Even so, it’s hard to know which schools are turning out the most employable grads, which leaves some industry leaders shaking their heads. “Amazingly enough, [employability] is not the metric for success that universities follow,” says businessman Reza Satchu, who teaches the highly successful economics of entrepreneurship course at the University of Toronto.
2011 Student Surveys: Complete results
Students tell universities how the system is working. It’s all about class time.
Teaching often comes second at universities—quite literally. Professors are expected to spend only 40 per cent of their time in the classroom, consulting with students, and marking their work. The rest is spent on research and other duties. The research-intensive university produces world-class discoveries to be sure, but it also produces grumbling undergraduates. The results of this year’s student satisfaction surveys couldn’t show this more clearly. The research-intensive universities for the most part do not perform as well on these student surveys.
Schools that dare to focus on teaching have risen to the top of the National Survey of Student Engagement (NSSE). Professors at teaching-focused universities like Quest, Trinity Western and King’s at Western are free to spend a majority of their time engaging with students in the classroom, the office or beyond. Considering the fact that a recent study from the University of Alberta found that the average professor is already working 56 hours per week, it’s difficult to expect them to do more. The only way they can spend more time with students is to de-emphasize research. And not all researchers make good teachers. Teaching-focused schools focus on pedagogy in the job interview, says David Sylvester, principal of King’s at Western. It’s certainly paying off for his school. Six in 10 senior-year students say they would definitely go back to King’s if they were allowed to start over, the NSSE survey found. That’s compared to only 45 per cent of students overall, and only 21 per cent of senior-year students from the University of Ottawa.
The student’s Quest
From dirt and dreams to student favourite: what’s different about Quest University is pretty much everything
When Celeta Cook of Deseronto, Ont., applied five years ago as a 17-year-old to Quest University, the hilltop site in the coastal mountain community of Squamish, B.C., was little more than dirt and dreams. “I did my preview day in a hard hat and a reflective vest,” says Cook, now part of Quest’s first grad class this April 30. The library will be finished, she was promised, “it just hasn’t been built yet.” Far from being put off, she was excited. “All right,” she said, “I’ll see you guys in September.” She was one of 73 students in 2007. There are now about 300, as it builds toward its capacity of 650—still smaller than most of the high schools the students came from.
For Cook, it was a good fit. Quest, a private, not-for-profit undergraduate liberal arts and sciences university, is not for the faint of heart. Its promotional literature welcomes “iconoclasts, convention-challengers, pioneers, risktakers, edge seekers, creators . . . ” The same criteria apply to its faculty, and certainly its outgoing president, David J. Helfand, who divides his time between two coasts. He’s a teacher and administrator at Quest, and he chairs the astronomy department at New York’s Ivy League Columbia University.
