#aucc report

[thebriefingroom-blog]

Canadian universities must boost enrolment to prevent labour shortage: report

Canadian university enrolment must increase by 1.3 per cent a year to produce enough skilled workers to meet demand and fill hundreds of thousands of jobs that will be left vacant this decade by retiring baby boomers, says a report released today.

"If this growth in new graduates is not reached, there will likely be labour shortages in knowledge-intensive occupations," the Association of Universities and Colleges of Canada said in a statement while releasing its Enrolment Trends 2011. "In other words, there could be jobs available without qualified workers to fill them."

The report says all provinces are facing a decline in the 18-to-21 age cohort in coming years, although it's expected to be less severe in British Columbia than elsewhere in Canada. But at the same time, the number of visa students and new immigrants coming to Canada with a university degree -- which has almost tripled during the past decade -- will remain strong...

[thebriefingroom-blog]

Aboriginal Students See Substantial Increase in cliches

MOU is DOA.

Recently, there was something of a buzz here in Atlantic Canada over a new memorandum of agreement among universities and First Nations. Media reports called the MOU “historic” and implied that it would begin a new era that would see a swell of participation in higher education among Aboriginal Canadians in the Atlantic region.

If the reports could be believed, the news would be very good indeed. It is no secret after all, that while many aboriginals have excelled at the highest levels of education, as a group, Aboriginal Canadians are less likely than Canadians in general to attend university and to earn university degrees. According to this AUCC report, only 8 per cent of Native Canadians complete university, and this Statscan report shows how aboriginal women have educational attainment rates well below non-aboriginal women. And since university education has the real benefits of broader knowledge and sharper skills, as well as other vaguely imagined values that might also sway an employer or lending agency, higher education can be one way to ameliorate the poverty that disproportionately affects many aboriginals...

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