All Posts Tagged With: "degree"
Educated and unemployed
Jobless rate for immigrants with degrees 4 times the national average
A new report is highlighting how tough it can be for university-educated immigrants to find employment in Canada. The unemployment rate for that group of immigrants was almost 14 per cent last year compared to 3.4 per cent for Canadian-born workers with a degree, said the report released Tuesday by the Community Foundations of Canada. It cites unpublished estimates from the Statistics Canada Labour Force survey.
The jobs situation got worse for university-educated immigrants compared to 2006, while their Canadian-born counterparts held their own, said Monica Patten, president and CEO of the group that released Canada’s Vital Signs 2010, an annual report looking at quality of life in this country. She said it’s “disheartening” to see the gap. “As our data tells us, and as our report says, the more education you have, the harder in fact it is,” Patten said from Ottawa. “It’s easy to get a job in trades or in services, so immigrants get scooped up for those kinds of jobs . . . (It’s) much, much more challenging to get a job in Canada in a profession for which you were trained outside of Canada.”
Cristina Popescu, 34, is in that situation after arriving in Canada almost 2 1/2 years ago. She was a math teacher in Romania for about 12 years, and was equipped with a master’s degree in mathematics. Now, she’s working toward credentials that would allow her to teach in the public school system in Calgary, where she lives with her husband. She was told she needed to acquire 40 credits — about 13 courses, each one worth three credits.
Patten points out that programs such as the Immigrant Access Fund of Alberta can help by providing small low-interest loans to these educated immigrants to help them acquire needed accreditation and training to allow them to work in Canada. Popescu applied for and received a $5,000 loan, which enabled her to start taking required post-secondary classes, she said. “It was crucial because at that time, my husband — the company that he worked (for) at that time — went bankrupt,” she said, adding that the loan was the only way she could obtain money to take her courses.
And although she wishes she could be a teacher in the public system in Canada without taking additional courses, she’s not complaining. “We know we have to work hard to prove newcomers are worth it to be employed,” she said. Popescu’s husband, also from Romania, is employed again, creating computer software for an insurance company. He was to be sworn in as a Canadian citizen on Monday, she said.
Patten said the loan repayment success rate is very high for the Immigrant Access Fund and she’s calling for versions of the fund to be started in other parts of the country. She noted that on average, Canada accepts more than 240,000 immigrants a year, and these people often don’t have networks to help them find work. “And then you have the absence of accreditation … That’s very challenging, and we believe we can turn that around, this country can turn that around.”
Community Foundations of Canada is an umbrella organization for 170 community foundations that support charities, and provided $140 million to local organizations last year.
The Canadian Press
U of T recalls diplomas
Hundreds of students receive parchment with spelling error
Due to a spelling error, hundreds of University of Toronto-Mississauga graduates have had their parchments recalled, campus paper, the Strand has reported. Some 1,350 students who graduated in fall 2009 and spring 2010, received parchments that included the wrong title for Ian Orchard, who was then the vice-president and principal of the satellite campus. The error was detected in June, and affected graduates were notified last week. The university assures students that their degrees are still valid, and that all replacement and shipping costs will be covered by the school.
B.C.’s next university?
College of the Rockies gets degree granting authority
British Columbia has added another name to its extensive list of degree granting institutions. College of the Rockies (COTR) has been given the go-ahead to offer a Bachelor of Business Administration in Sustainable Business Practices, president Nick Rubidge announced last week.
The four-year program, that begins in September, combines a COTR diploma in accounting, marketing, or general business, with courses from the arts and sciences. Students will complete online specialization courses in their upper years either through COTR or another institution that has agreed to partner with the college, such as Thompson Rivers University and Athabasca University. Fourth-year courses will contain an applied sustainability focus.
According to the Cranbrook Daily Townsman, Rubidge says that a focus on sustainability is necessary as businesses are increasingly expected to consider the environmental impacts of their operations. “I see the skills of our graduates being used in a whole variety of businesses, not just a niche in environmental business, but in all businesses. All business practices need to start by building a business model that includes sustainability and environmental issues,” he said.
Entering the league of degree granting institutions has been a COTR goal for years. “Becoming a degree-granting post-secondary institution is not an easy task. There are many standards, evaluations and criteria to meet, and the process takes years,” Rubidge said.
The first 30
Our on-the-ground undergrad reports on his debut month
I consider myself something of an idealist. I’m reasonably conscious of the many problems in the world and of the effects my actions have on the planet and its inhabitants, and I try to act accordingly. Of course, I hope others will do the same, and perhaps I too easily apply my values when judging the actions and beliefs of other people, governments, corporations, etc. My idealism has also earned me regular reminders from friends and family to “take yourself less seriously.”
I’ve just begun my first year at the University of Toronto, and I’m aware that this is a time when values and personalities can be challenged, shifted and eventually—potentially—solidified. People tend to progress, maybe unconsciously, from idealism to pragmatism as they mature. Idealism becomes a sort of nostalgia: you remember “the good old days,” but are resigned to the fact that those days are decidedly in the past.
Even at the tender age of 18, I have noticed this shift in myself. The more I learn, the more complex things become. The more I realize the barriers that lie in the way of the more equitable, sustainable, logical world I idealize, the less likely it seems that my idealism stands a chance.
Most universities in Canada have become veritable degree-churning machines. A bachelor’s degree today is yesterday’s high school diploma. Six million Chinese graduate each year into an already saturated global job market. A desire to do good is often dismissed as naive or met with suspicion. All in all, there doesn’t seem to be much room left for idealism.
We’ll see what kind of shape mine is in after a month of university.
Touchdown
Aug. 30: If you’re moving to a new city for university, it’s a good idea to arrive a few days before school starts so you can have a chance to explore the area around your new home. Once the craziness of Frosh Week begins, followed immediately by your first classes, you’re not likely to venture far off campus, so familiarizing yourself with the neighbourhood can give you a head start on breaking the bubble that often develops in first year.
For me, coming from Vancouver, it gave me a chance to spend time with friends and family who already lived in Toronto and knew the city well. One of them took me to a drum circle, the likes of which I had never seen: hundreds of people gathered in a park in the middle of downtown Toronto, dancing to a beat you could hear from blocks away. It gave me an idea of the immense variety of things to do and see in this city, and I wouldn’t have had the chance to do such things had I come straight to school.
Through the rabbit hole
Sept. 3: Today was move-in day. After the initial “awkward lunch”—standing around for two hours meeting your fellow first-years and hearing the same questions over and over (“What’s your major? Where are you from?”), it was time to learn the requisite school cheers, glorifying ourselves and putting down everyone else. It’s curious how people always feel this need to distinguish themselves within a group, even as they dismiss it as just a fun tradition.
Lose this, and forget about your future
We’re told that education is more than a piece of paper. Not everyone has that luxury
Imagine going to school for 18 years and having no proof of it afterwards.
That’s the situation some Chinese university graduates are currently facing. As the New York Times reports, losing your ‘file’ in China (a sealed envelope handled by Chinese government officials containing the sole existing record of all of your credentials) can mean losing your future.
In this case, Xue Longlong, along with 10 or so other college graduates with once-bright futures, had their files “lost” (they suspect they were stolen and sold), thus losing proof of their university education and any hope of finding well-paying jobs. Now, they’re struggling to pay off their student debts while working low-paying gigs.
Xiaomei, Longlong’s sister, is quoted as saying that although she once thought that she, too, would go to university, she’s now reconsidering because of what happened to her brother.
“I want to quit,” she said during a school lunch break. “My brother graduated from college. What good did it do him?”
Here in North America, we’re always being told that postsecondary education is about higher learning, and not just a piece of paper. We’re always reminded that our motivation should be a desire to learn and expand our minds, rather than simply to get a good job.
Elsewhere in the world, this story reminds us, not everybody has that luxury.
The three or four-year BA debate
Which is better? It looks like Canada and America are going to switch
Here’s an interesting contrast between America and Canada on the length of study for a standard Bachelor’s degree. While Canada has offered three-year degrees for decades, American universities have loyally stuck with the four-year degree.
Now, Canadian universities (facing the potential of declining enrolment due to demographics) are looking to eliminate the three-year degree in favour of keeping students around for an extra year. Meanwhile, as the U.S. government pressures universities on the high cost of PSE, American universities are looking at the three-year degree as a solution that could lower the cost of a BA degree by a year.
Degrees of deceit
More than 200 military members, civilians and contractors caught with fake degrees
When U.S. soldiers can’t be all they can be, some fake it.
At last count, more than U.S. 200 service members, army civilians and defence contractors bought bogus university degrees in order to snag promotions and boost their paychecks. One especially sneaky major rose through the ranks with the help of eight fake degrees, including a bachelor’s in Business Management, a master’s in Management and a Ph.D in International Management Strategy.
“To have someone who would go and do something like this, it sickens me,” said one defence department spokesman. “Each case, it is significant, it is egregious and it just smacks right at those core values that we live by.”
The U.S. army has launched its own internal investigation.
Watch the video from WHNT News here.
Why every day is amateur hour in the House
Two-thirds of our MPs have a university degree, compared to 93 per cent in the U.S.
Apart from sex, the only realm of human achievement where ignorance and inexperience are widely seen as virtues is politics. Sarah Palin is only the most notorious recent example of the phenomenon; the “vote for me, I have no experience” gambit succeeds with remarkable frequency, which speaks volumes about public attitudes toward the political process and politicians. Politics is seen as a profession in the same sense that prostitution is, practised only by people of highly suspect moral character.
Canadian politicians are no exception, and the merits of this judgment are clearest in this country in the daily disgrace known as question period. To call question period a zoo would be an insult to the relative civility and good temperament of wild animals; one suspects that the occasional parleys between Bloods and Crips in South Central Los Angeles are less partisan and hostile affairs.
There is a tendency to chalk this behaviour up to an excess of familiarity among parliamentarians—the result of too many lifelong MPs going at it hammer and tongs day after day, year after year. The obvious analogue here is the famously entrenched U.S. Congress, which is highly professionalized and yet beset by partisanship and scandal.
Indeed, not so long ago there was a gnawing sense among some Ottawa observers that the incumbency rates in the Commons had reached levels dangerously comparable to those in the U.S. Congress.
And so in 2005, Jeffrey Simpson of the Globe and Mail wrote a sharp column lamenting the steep rise of MPs’ salaries under Jean Chrétien. Canadians, he argued, had become increasingly alienated from the political process, which they saw as the domain of “an increasingly self-perpetuating political class, or caste, with its own vocabulary, rituals, defence mechanisms and, in many instances, rather old ideas.”
Except a new study out this week from the Public Policy Forum suggests just the opposite. Bluntly stated, the report’s conclusions are that the House of Commons is so bad precisely because it is made up (mostly) of men who have little experience and education, lack any institutional memory of how Parliament ought to function, and are widely ignorant of the proper relationship between politicians and the bureaucracy.
The report’s figures are striking. One quarter of Canadian MPs are newly elected, while just over two-thirds have less than five years experience in the Commons and only three per cent have been serving their constituents for more than 15 years. There is a sharp contrast with U.S. and U.K. figures: two-thirds of the U.S. Congress have more than five years experience and over a quarter of representatives have more than 15 years experience; in Britain, two-thirds of parliamentarians have more than seven years experience, and a third have more than 11 years experience.
Where to go for university – and does it matter?
Deciding where to get your Master’s can be a tricky thing. Here are some tips
Got a question this week.
I am a mature student just finishing my first year of studies. Looking to my future, I will complete a Masters degree in Economics. My question to you is, does it really matter where I obtain my degree?
There were more details in the full question, but the fellow in this case has some fairly compelling reasons to stay one place. He also has concerns about the reputation and marketability of the degree. And he has some fairly significant professional experience. My answer is going to hinge significantly on this last point.
Reputation, employment prospects, all the intangible aspects of a degree at one institution vs. a degree at another … frankly, I would never pretend to be in a position to evaluate all of these things accurately. But I do feel the frustration from students and applicants as they realize they aren’t in a position to do that either. The fellow who wrote in this week put is as well as I possibly could, so I’ll just quote him.
Universities spend a lot of money on marketing, luring prospective students to their campuses. They post succession rates, average salary after the program, jobsites of recent graduates, etc. This leads the reader to believe that one school degree is better than another, depending on where the student wants to work, or how much money he wants to make. All of these statistics can be grossly misleading.
Hell yeah. That’s the problem boiled down perfectly to the essentials. This sort of data is very misleading. Even when the data is collected by third parties in a comparative environment it still relies, of necessity, on the self-reported success of students. And then it’s very rarely collected by third parties at all. When you get this data it’s almost certainly presented by the school itself, and all the inevitable problems of bias and self-interest creep in. It’s probably safe to assume that no reputable school is going to outright lie to you, but there are a lot of ways to create a false impression without actually lying.
For the sake of the guy who actually wrote in, I’ll sidestep this problem entirely and give him my advice for his particular situation. When you’ve got a student who has significant employment experience already, and other sorts of qualifications to stand on, the intangible benefits of one institution over another are much less significant. Even grades become less significant. The classic example is the business executive who needs a MBA to take the next step in her career. Getting the degree may be critical. But where it comes from and what sorts of grades she actually receives are less important.
Rethinking the value of a degree
During this economic downturn, some graduates are asking whether a university degree has been oversold
From The Christian Science Monitor:
Today’s economic downturn has blindsided a generation of young people around the globe brought up to believe that a college degree guaranteed them financial prosperity. Whether in the US, China, or in countries in between, graduates from even marquee-name schools are feeling the crunch, prompting many rightly to rethink the value of their education.
In light of the pervasive grim data, some are beginning to ask whether a college degree has been oversold.
Surprisingly, as far back as 1963 that precise question was raised by John Keats in a little noticed book with the apt title of “The Sheepskin Psychosis.” The author concluded that college is merely the most convenient place to learn how to learn. It is not an absolute determinant by any means.
The most recent exponent of this view is Charles Murray. In “Real Education,” which came out last year, he argues that a bachelor’s degree tells an employer nothing except that an applicant has a certain amount of intellectual ability and perseverance.
