Is Government Funding Dictating Our Career Paths?

B.C. supports trades education to the detriment of other fields, says post-secondary teachers organisation

An organisation representing post-secondary educators in B.C. claims that the way education is being funded in the province is forcing students down career paths that they may not be suited for. Earlier this month, the Federation of Post-Secondary Educators of B.C. released a report that describes the situation in our post-secondary institutions as a crisis.

The group says that programs training students for jobs in the trades and technology sectors are receiving disproportionate funding to the neglect of programs for other fields of study.

“We’re trying to raise awareness of what’s been systemic underfunding, as far as we’re concerned, and the impact that’s had on access and affordability for post-secondary in B.C.,” says George Davison, president of the FPSE. “The burden of post-secondary education has shifted over the last two years to students and their families.”

The FPSE believes this is an issue that should concern teachers in B.C. as well as students.

“If students are less able to get into courses because institutional decisions of cutting programs or adding more international students, then that effects our work as well as your learning conditions,” says Davison.

Much of the funding for post-secondary programs in B.C. is determined by the B.C. Skills for Jobs Blueprint, a document commissioned by the federal government to show which jobs will be in high demand in the coming years. Unsurprisingly, many of the jobs highlighted are in the technology and trades sector.

The FPSE argues that this approach creates a disparity between the funding for these areas and other fields of study, and as a result, the post-secondary system in B.C. is failing to meet the needs of many students.

“When you’re increasing the proportion of institutional funds that are directed to trades training, that takes away an institution’s ability to plan for local community needs,” says Davidson. “Things have been far more prescriptive from Victoria in recent years. That hampers the institution’s ability to meet community needs.”

Davison says that this is a particularly relevant issue in B.C. because the province already has the highest amount of student debt in the country.

“Student debt is higher [in B.C.] than any other province. The interest rate on student loans is higher here than in any other province. Students here are proportionately more affected by the changes over time than other provinces,” he says.

KPU provost and vice president Dr. Salvador Ferreras strongly disagrees with the assertions in the FPST’s report.

“I think that the way [the issue] is represented in this report seems to not really look at a really comprehensive picture of where students’ needs are and what students have identified as important,” says Ferreras. “It’s really hard to cast a single view of the system in a report that is this short and this limited.”

Ferreras argues that, despite the Skills for Jobs Blueprint, it is still up to individual institutions to decide what’s important in terms of program funding based on what they know about their students.

“The institutions still have the autonomy to decide what’s important to us, how we deliver it, and we make sometimes very difficult and long decisions about what is important in terms of what students need out in the world,” he says.

Dr. Ferreras remains confident that KPU and other institutions in the province are adequately meeting the needs of students and that strong student enrolment is proof of that.

“Students vote with their feet,” says Ferreras. “If we’re not providing what you need then you’ll just go elsewhere, and that certainly hasn’t been the case, because enrolment continues to be steady.”