Category: PEW Team Research
Education International has released a case study of the situation of TVET in Côte d’Ivoire. The French version of the report can be found here.
Professor Wheelahan was interviewed in the wake of the release of PEW’s latest report comparing the situation of TVET in several jurisdictions across the world and presenting a productive capabilities framework meant to support policy-makers and researchers. The interview is available through Stitcher.com.
Worlds of Education published a short piece by PEW’s Dr. Lavigne looking at the situation of TVET in Côte d’Ivoire.
PEW’s Professor Moodie has published a short piece in Worlds of Education where he explains the framework of productive capabilities and its use for TVET researchers and policy-makers. The piece can be found here.
Education International has released the final report on TVET and social justice prepared by Pathways to Education and Work’s Research Team. The report compares the situation across several jurisdictions and provides a productive capabilities framework to support future research and policy efforts. The report can be found here.
Professor Wheelahan shares her views on the situation of TAFE in Australia here.
WONKHE’s Julie Hare discusses PEW’s latest case study on the situation of TAFE in Australia here.
Professor Wheelahan published a piece on TVET, capabilities, and social justice on Worlds of Education.
Education International has released three related case studies prepared by Pathways to Education and Work. The case studies explore the situation of TVET in Australia, England, and Taiwan.
By Laura Servage
I completed my dissertation in partnership with an Alberta community college. Like most all community colleges, this institution was an important centre for credentialing in short courses and diplomas: the kinds of programs that could get people in to the workforce quickly, and match skills to high-needs occupational areas. The college relied on government funding for a great deal of its operating budget: Alberta Works clients on social assistance were funded to complete programs of study in the hopes that this would get them “off the dole,” so to speak, and employed to a level of self-sufficiency. The program is not unlike what is offered by Ontario Works.
The students who participated in my study were pursuing Licensed Practical Nursing (LPN) diplomas. The program was demanding and intensive, but graduates had a reasonable expectation of good paying work in health care. Most all I interviewed were interested in becoming nurses or nurse practitioners in the long run, and at the time of study, some pathways were in place to help LPN graduates to pursue these goals.
The college also offered shorter programs. In four to twelve months, students might complete credentials to become fork lift operators, day home providers, or health care aides. The provincial government was happy to just to get people working, and these less-skilled jobs might be appropriate for people — recent immigrants or example — who lacked the education and English language skills to tackle longer and more complex learning pathways.
Yet these short programs were missing something very important: the prospect of progress and growth that was available to the LPN students I was working with. Students were discouraged from completing any courses outside of those absolutely required to get them in to the workforce as quickly a possible, which meant that many could not even advance toward a high school diploma so long as they were on Alberta Works funding. Once obtaining credentials or certification, most could expect to work in jobs that would afford little future learning — credentialed or otherwise.
From the perspective of policy makers, in the college I worked with, LPNs with jobs and childcare providers with jobs were both success stories if they resulted in fewer people receiving public assistance. The college tallies its completion rates and employment rates. Numbers are reported. Fiscal year ends are closed, and new academic years begin. But what of our graduate x-ray technicians, childcare providers and medical receptionists? Are their jobs stable? Are they fulfilling? Will they have future opportunities to gain new knowledge and skills? Will their experience in their present jobs be valued by future employers?
<h4><strong>Education With Prospects for the Future</strong></h4>
There is no doubt that short courses offered by community colleges fulfill important roles, both in terms of individual development and meeting immediate labour market needs. However, the limited prospects for future growth in such occupations highlights many of the problems that arise when work and learning are constructed by policy makers entirely in economic terms — as something divorced from people’s community lives, interests and aspirations.
The capabilities approach to education calls for a more expansive understanding of education and work. It is a vision that cannot be achieved through market mechanisms alone. Presently, employability programs — particularly those aligned with so-called “welfare-to-work” schemes — perform a short-term and arguably short-sighted <em>matching</em> function: they develop skills in potential workers and match workers to jobs that need to be filled. The outcome is one with a good likelihood of employing people, but also of keeping them trapped in jobs without opportunities for growth (Keep & James, 2012).
<h4><strong>Coordinating Work and Learning</strong></h4>
Instead of a matching function, such programs need to move toward a coordinating function that builds and relies upon community partnerships. Because of their strong geographical roots and vocational focus, community colleges are ideally suited to perform this function (Wheelahan, 2016). Comparing Ontario’s VET-oriented colleges to Australia’s TAFEs, Wheelahan argues that Ontario’s system is superior because it relies more upon “high trust” relationships among employers, workers’ organizations, and educational institutions. Strong, flexible local partnerships make it more likely that VET can be developed within a capabilities framework rather than the narrow, short-term focus on skills engendered by human capital theory.
A similar vision for strong collaboration is articulated in the 2016 report to the Ontario Premier, <em>Building the Workforce of Tomorrow</em>. Interestingly, the panel states that, rather than inquiry toward a “highly skilled workforce,” it would be “more useful for the province to focus on the workforce as a whole.” (p. 10) The distinction drawn here is not elaborated and is thus somewhat unclear. It may be interpreted as aiming for greater inclusion of workers and labour market positions at the lower end of the skills sector in policy visioning and policy development.
The model of collaboration promoted in the report is similar to the partnership model that Wheelahan and Moodie have promoted within the capabilities framework. Instead of relying on markets that can buffet disadvantaged workers about in the “low pay no pay cycle,” (Essential Skills Ontario, 2012) social partnerships are intentional efforts among stakeholders to coordinate education, training and paid employment. Ideally such efforts yield vocational streams — overlapping occupations and occupational sectors that draw on like or similar capabilities (Wheelahan, Yu & Buchanan, 2015). The goal of developing vocational streams is to strengthen both horizontal and vertical mobility in ways that benefit workers and employers alike.
<h4><strong>Keeping the Full Spectrum in Mind</strong></h4>
The size and visibility of Ontario’s higher education sector makes it easy to focus on the kinds of pathways that move people diplomas to degrees — from mid-skill credentials to applied or academic degrees with subsequent potential for graduate skills. Indeed, PEW’s <a href=”http://https:/www.oise.utoronto.ca/pew/current-projects1/”>present SSHRC project</a> is focused very much in this area.
However, it is also important to recognize the kinds of pathways work that needs to happen at the lower end of the skills spectrum. Present PEW initiatives to map pathways for Canada’s engineers and nurses are revealing some of the challenges of developing career ladders and vocational streams that help people with short qualifications to move into academic and applied academic programs. These challenges must be addressed if a fully inclusive model of post-secondary pathways is to become a reality.
<strong>References</strong>
Conway, S. (2016). <em>Building the workforce of tomorrow</em>. Report from the Premier’s Highly Skilled Workforce Expert Panel. Retrieved from <a href=”https://files.ontario.ca/hsw_rev_engaoda_webfinal_july6.pdf”>https://files.ontario.ca/hsw_rev_engaoda_webfinal_july6.pdf</a>
Essential Skills Ontario (2012). <em>From better skills to better work</em>. Toronto ON: Author.
Keep, E., & James, S. (2012). A Bermuda triangle of policy? “Bad jobs”, skills policy and incentives to learn at the bottom end of the labour market. <em>Journal of Education Policy, 27</em>(2), 211–230. <a href=”https://doi.org/10.1080/02680939.2011.595510″>https://doi.org/10.1080/02680939.2011.595510</a>
Wheelahan, L. (2016). <em>Vocational education in crisis: Why we need a new social settlement</em>. Centre of the Study of Canadian and International Higher Education. OISE, University of Toronto.
Wheelahan, L., Buchanan, J., & Yu, S. (2015). <i>Linking qualifications and the labour market through capabilities and vocational streams. Synthesis report</i>. National Centre for Vocational Education Research (NCVER). Adelaide. Retrieved from https://www.ncver.edu.au/__data/assets/file/0018/9261/linking-quals-and-labour-market.pdf
by Edmund Adam
In 2000, the Postsecondary Education Choice and Excellence Act authorised Ontario’s colleges to award bachelor degrees. It marked a milestone in a journey that had begun a decade earlier with Charles Pascal’s (1990) Vision 2000, which recommended the creation of new degree-granting institutions. The government justified this reform on various grounds. A strong rationale was broadening student access to baccalaureate level study, particularly for students from groups under-represented in the university.
In 2002, college baccalaureates were officially introduced into Ontario’s post-secondary education (PSE) system, with nine colleges offering 12 baccalaureate programmes. In 2016, thirteen colleges offered 108 baccalaureate programmes, and with full-time enrolments estimated at 15,000. However, the question remains about the extent to which college baccalaureates have achieved the social objective of widening access – that is, facilitated baccalaureate completion rates for traditionally under-represented target groups.
Prior studies in other jurisdictions indicate that college baccalaureates have indeed broadened PSE participation for under-represented groups (Floyd, Skolnik, & Walker, 2005; Wheelahan, Moodie, Billett, & Kelly, 2009). Our Ontario Human Capital Research and Innovation Fund research project addresses this issue by focusing on the characteristics of students enrolled in college baccalaureate programmes, their decision making processes, their reasons for enrolment, and the impact of participation on their identities.
In our study analysis, we applied a theoretical framework developed by Ball, Reay, and David (2002) regarding two ideal types of students in terms of PSE choice: embedded and contingent choosers. Embedded choosers are those students who have a clearly forged pathway to PSE coming out of high school, whereas contingent choosers are those for whom participation in PSE depends upon overcoming one or more barriers. The two ideal types build on Pierre Bourdieu’s notion of ‘cultural capital’ which, in its simplest form, refers to the kinds of symbolic wealth transmitted from middle-and upper-income parents to their children to sustain family status across generations (Bourdieu, 1977). Generally, it is embedded choosers who possess this cultural capital.
The study presents evidence obtained through interviews with 22 baccalaureate students from five Ontario colleges. Preliminary analysis of interview data offers interesting results. For example, 60% of the interviewees were non-traditional students above the age of 25 years. 55% students explained that their decisions to choose college baccalaureates were informed mostly by a ‘word of mouth’ from those in their immediate social circle: friends, colleagues, and sometimes parents. Reasons for choosing a college degree programmes varied, but the most important reasons were location, cost, greater opportunities for coops, the applied nature of programmes, availability of specialised programmes, lower admission requirements, and ample financial aids for students with outstanding academic credentials at high school.
Data also suggest that college baccalaureate students are, more often than not, contingent PSE choosers. This is evident in two of our findings. First is the local considerations for decision making: cost, location, coops, and financial aid are important for college baccalaureate students, in stark contrast with embedded choosers’ considerations such as status and prestige of degrees. Second, 73% of students report no parental involvement in the decision to attend a college baccalaureate programme.
As to student identity, our analysis shows that college baccalaureate students identify more with the field of study than with the college they attend. Students interviewed indicate that when asked how they describe their experience to family, friends, and acquaintances, they prefer to talk about their field of study or the profession they want to enter before they volunteer the name of the institution in which they are undertaking this degree.
Our analysis provide insights into the contributions colleges can make to dealing with the challenge of fulfilling the growing demand for bachelor degrees and the provision of equitable access to baccalaureate education and other access initiatives.
References
Ball, S. J., Reay, D., & David, M. (2002). Ethnic choosing: Minority ethnic students, social class and higher education choice. Race Ethnicity and Education, 5(4), 333-357. doi:10.1080/1361332022000030879
Bourdieu, P. (1977). Cultural reproduction and social reproduction. In J. Karabel & A. H. Halsey (Eds.), Power and ideology in education (pp. 487-511). New York: Oxford University Press.
Floyd, D. L., Skolnik, M. L., & Walker, K. P. (2005). The community college baccalaureate: Emerging trends and policy issues. Sterling, Virginia: Stylus.
Vision 2000. (1990). Quality and opportunity. The final report of the vision 2000 task force. Toronto: Ministry of Colleges and Universities.
Wheelahan, L., Moodie, G., Billett, S., & Kelly, A. (2009). Higher education in TAFE. Adelaide: National Centre for Vocational Education Research.
by Edmund Adam, M.Ed.
In Ontario, as in many jurisdictions, the expansion of higher education is justified in part as a strategy to promote equity, social inclusion and social mobility. Given that lower-income and first-generation students are more likely to enrol in a college for their first credential, effective transitions to university programs are an important part of Ontario’s strategy to increase equitable access to higher level credentials (Wheelahan et al., 2015).
This strategy appears sound, but also relies on the assumption that all universities are created equal. However, as ranking systems have led to global positional competition among universities for elite status and students (Hazelkorn, 2011; Marginson, 2006), it is increasingly the case that institutional rankings can act as barriers to students seeking credentials in advanced professional and graduate degree levels.
In my master’s degree program at OISE, I posed the question of whether the stratification of universities through various ranking systems might constitute a challenge to equitable access, and thus require more attention on the part of policy makers. To examine the theory in the Ontario provincial context, I used publicly available student enrolment data to compare the extent to which college transfer students were admitted among differently ranked Ontario universities. Drawing on the same university classifications used by Maclean’s rankings, I identified six highly ranked universities according to U15 membership, and fourteen universities that were not U15 members. The U15 group includes Canada’s leading research universities. These are generally but not exclusively the oldest institutions. These universities house a broad range of graduate programmes and research, as well as professional schools. Ontario has six of these universities. These include, in alphabetical order, McMaster University, Queen’s University, University of Ottawa, University of Toronto, University of Waterloo, University of Western Ontario (now Western University).
Previous literature has proposed that universities in Ontario are not particularly selective at the undergraduate level (Fallis, 2013). However, this study shows that status impacts the selection criteria that universities set for incoming students. Top ranked universities on Maclean’s table (Medical Doctoral) tend to prefer school leavers (that is, student coming directly to university from high school) to transfer students from colleges. The following table shows that Ontario transfer students are less likely to transfer in to research-intensive institutions: those universities that are members of the U15, and more highly recognized in global rankings.
| Institution | Admitted on the Basis of College | Total Bachelor Commencers | % Commencers Who Are Transfers |
| Medical Doctoral | 1,146 | 34,413 | 3.3% |
| Comprehensive | 2,708 | 38,788 | 7% |
| Primarily Undergraduate | 1,432 | 7,562 | 19% |
| Total | 5,286 | 80,763 | 6.5% |
At comprehensive institutions, admission ratios are one transfer student for every 2.1 school leavers (i.e. students entering directing from high school). At medical/doctoral institutions, that ratio climbs to one transfer student for every 5.7 students who are admitted coming out of high school. While the study sample is small and does not pin down the numbers of transfer students from colleges, it does yield a provocative pattern, worthy of further investigation with larger numbers.
Do Transfer Pathways Level the Playing Field?
My findings suggest that while college to university pathways offer opportunities for college students to study for a bachelor’s degree, they may not provide them with much access to the most prestigious universities, thus reinforcing traditional hierarchies in post-secondary education.
References
Fallis, G. (2013). Further differentiation of the binary system. In J. S. Levin, & S. Kater (Eds.), Understanding community colleges (pp. 245-262). Ney York: Routledge.
Hazelkorn, E. (2011). Rankings and the reshaping of higher education. Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire, UK ; New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
Marginson, S. (2006). Dynamics of national and global competition in higher education. Higher Education, 52(1), 1-39.
Wheelahan, L., G. Moodie, E. Lavinge, J. Yang, A. Brijmohan, & Childs, R. (2015). Pathways to education and work in Ontario and Canada. Ontario Human Capital Research and Innovation Fund (OHCRIF). Ontario.
Edmund is a doctoral student in the Department of Leadership, Adult and Higher Education, and a member of the PEW Research Team.
Education International has made available a report put together by Pathways to Education and Work’s Research Group on Global Trends and Social Justice. The report can be found here.
By Laura Servage
The PEW research group is very pleased to be working with ILead, the Institute for Leadership Education in Engineering at the University of Toronto in a joint project investigating the career pathways of engineering graduates. ILead offers curricular and co-curricular learning opportunities that help aspiring engineers to become great team leaders and project managers. Many ILead program participants may be encountering professional working environments for the first time. What are their expectations of the workplace? And what kinds of jobs should the field of engineering be preparing its graduates for?
Helping to answer these questions is where the Pathways to Education and Work team comes in. A PEW project researching Canadian educational and occupational pathways[1] includes focused investigation into how workers and employers understand and use credentials for entry and advancement in different occupational fields. Fields vary in the kinds of entry credentials they require, and the kinds of opportunities that further education affords those who are already working in the field. What can these variations tell us about how to best link education and work? This is a central research question for the PEW team.
PEW and ILead will be working together to examine the post-graduate pathways of undergraduate engineering degree holders. Engineering has a very well established program of professional licensure. Engineering graduates from accredited Canadian programs can be assured that they are eligible to pursue this license without the need to write any technical exams. However, the P.Eng. (Professional Engineer) designation, in addition to a law and ethics exam, critically requires valid Canadian work experience under the supervision of a P.Eng. Many engineers are not obtaining licenses, and many are working on jobs that do not require them to obtain a license. Whether these dynamics are by choice or by necessity are among the questions we’ll be investigating.
For ILead, the project is an opportunity to leverage Statistics Canada’s National Graduate Survey data to inform the future development of engineering curricula and co-curricula. As ILead Assistant Director, Community of Practice, Mike Klassen observes, “if the jobs that engineers are doing are changing, we need to be thinking about and maybe re-thinking how their education prepares them for those jobs.” For the PEW team, this project is a great opportunity to gain insight into one of the occupational fields we’ll be investigating more closely in 2017.
[1] Qualifications: The Link Between Educational and Occupational Pathways and Labour Market Outcomes is funded by SSHRC, the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.
By Gavin Moodie
3 group members participated in the 2nd international conference of the Association for Research in Post-compulsory Education held at Harris Manchester College, Oxford.
Harris Manchester College at the University of Oxford, United Kingdom. Photo by Hmclibrary (Own work) [CC BY-SA 4.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0)], via Wikimedia Commons
Very interesting papers were presented on college level education in Australia, Canada, England, Malaysia and the USA. Group leader Leesa Wheelahan and I presented on the group’s development of a pathways decision tool and framework for Ontario’s Council on Articulation and Transfer. Team member Christine Arnold presented the group’s mapping of Canada’s transition systems compared to transition systems in other liberal market economies. OISE doctoral candidate Tim Brunet analyzed the challenges for the liberal arts in Ontario.
Joel Petrie presented a most engaging paper titled ‘Here be FE dragons… Mapping post compulsory metaphors’. He noted that in 1935 the President of the UK Board of Education stated:
It has, I believe, been an old complaint among many concerned with the technical side of education that that part of education has been the Cinderella. Well, the Government is determined that even if there was any truth in that in the past, there shall be none in the future.
Petrie pointed out that subsequently 5 UK Conservative and Labour ministers announced that they had ‘buried forever’ vocational education’s Cinderella image: Baker (1989), Johnson (2006), Blunkett (2010), Gove (2013) and Hayes (2014).
It is not clear whether the most recent post-16 skills plan for England will achieve its ambitious goals. This will not be helped by the Minister for Skills resigning 5 days after releasing the plan.
Debra Bragg presented the perspectives on applied baccalaureates offered by USA community colleges of 4 groups: community colleges, universities, employers and students.
Robin Simmons closed the conference with a strong presentation on liberal studies in English vocational education. Simmons argued that whilst liberal or general studies was highly variable in both content and quality, at least and under certain circumstances it provided working-class learners the opportunity to locate their experiences of vocational learning within a critical framework which is largely absent today.
The conference allowed plenty of time for discussion, both in formal sessions and informally amongst a small group of experts in the beautiful setting of an Oxford college.