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Saturday, September 11, 2010
Fact and fancy in media coverage of education
In the same newspaper edition in which my first ad for Rules of Engagement appeared,
two articles suggested conflicting diagnoses of the health of our education systems. Charles Cirtwell, President and CEO of
the Atlantic Institute for Market Studies, rode his hobby horse of Atlantic Canadian education reformation in “Education
reform starts with the average NBer”; meanwhile, The Vancouver Sun columnist Harvey Enchin invited readers
to eat cake in his article, “Good return on university investment.” The publishing of differing opinions on important,
public matters is one hallmark of a free and healthy society. My concern about these articles is that both authors pride themselves
on attention to the details of research, yet their conclusions suggest shallow, even misleading treatments of their subjects.
In addressing the shortcomings of New Brunswick public education,
Cirtwell enjoins readers to endorse “the Edmonton model of public education delivery.” For readers who are unfamiliar
with Cirtwell’s other work, he has chosen the city of Edmonton’s system of chartered schools as his benchmark
for administrative success. Edmonton has a chartered school system that enables each school to develop its education platform
with funds from the provincial government. Parents “talk with their children’s feet”; students may go to
any school of their parents’ choosing, and tax dollars are allotted to each school accordingly. The result is a free
market system for education: whichever school does the best job of marketing itself to parental interests will reap the financial
benefit. Since all parents do not have the same criteria in mind for their children’s education, not one but several
schools will succeed, depending on branding that attracts some parents to one school, other parents to another.
Assuming that the Edmonton model results in better education, the simple truth is that New Brunswick
can’t afford it. Edmonton has more people with much higher incomes concentrated in a much smaller place. In other words,
Edmonton can support a competitive market; New Brunswick can’t. Because of our geographic size, lower population and
smaller education budget, we need a system that affords the best education under these conditions. Our students cannot commute
across the province to preferred schools nor can our budget afford to keep several schools in the market as they jockey from
year to year for students. The best-case scenario would see the disappearance of schools in areas of low income or low population,
and the growth of schools in communities of high income or high population. Even if the Edmonton model were viable in New
Brunswick, it would exacerbate the divide between those who have and those who have not.
My concern with Enchin’s position is more complicated. He is a stickler for detail, and provides statistics
and their sources to back up his claims. He is convincing in his argument, but the last sentence—his conclusion from
these statistics—made me pause: “For all students heading to university this fall, rest assured that you’ve
made the right decision for your future and ours.” Enchin refers to a few of the many sources that support other claims
that, in fact, “all students” are not getting the return on investment he indicates.
Enchin must lump James Côté and Anton Allahar, sociology
professors at the University of Western Ontario, among “those for whom it has become fashionable to decry the decline
of Canadian universities.” Côté and Allahar provide a powerfully argued, well-documented
cause for concern in their 2007 Ivory Tower Blues: A University System in Crisis. By examining the same sources and
many, many more, the authors make Enchin’s error obvious: he has fallen victim to the belief in the non-existent, “average”
subject of a study.
To explain by example, we know that if Statistics
Canada reports Canadian couples raising 1.8 children, that some couples are raising two, others one, still others three or
more, or none. We should not picture a society homogeneously comprised of households raising one and four-fifths children.
Similarly, we cannot assume that, if statistics suggest a positive return on investment for a university education, all investors
are reaping the same benefits.
The same sources that report Enchin’s
claim of return on investment also report a twenty percent drop-out rate for first-year, Canadian university students and
a return on investment highest for students concentrated in affluent communities. These and other statistics suggest that
some graduates are greatly benefiting from the financial advantages of education while others are necessarily benefiting much
less. Enchin also glosses over the real concern for the credentialist labour market we have created, in which many job descriptions
require undergraduate degrees for careers that simply don’t need them, putting great financial strain on the students
pursuing those careers.
I believe that Enchin is right in suggesting
that a well-educated society is, in many ways, a better society. Why not pay the piper and make postsecondary education more
affordable? Until we do, we cannot in good conscience encourage the students who will make the biggest sacrifices for their
education to make investments that will often see the lowest returns.
Sat, September 11, 2010 | link
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