The Pathetic State of Albertan Universities

[HotHotHeat]

Great piece this morning from the Herald about what it means being a high school grad with post secondary ambitions in Alberta.

Imagine for a moment the following scenario: Your child, who's in Grade 11, finishes his or her year with an 80 per cent gradepoint average as a final mark. Then, a few weeks later, you receive a letter from your local school board informing you that your beloved Johnny or Janey didn't make the cut and won't be able to get into Grade 12 because this year, you need 85 per cent to move on.

. . .

Mount Royal had 10,785 qualified applicants in 2007. Of those, 5,900 were admitted and a whopping 4,885 were turned away, to seek their educations elsewhere or to put their futures on hold for now or indefinitely. During the same year, 871 qualified applicants attempted to get into Mount Royal's four-year nursing degree program. How many were admitted? Just 314. The other 557 moved on to who knows where?

This at a time when it's acknowledged that Alberta has a severe nursing shortage and as a result, regional health-care board budgets went into the red by tens of millions of dollars mostly because of the overtime nurses are being paid.

"We have the lowest university level participation rate out of high school in Calgary in the country and that is largely due to supply and demand," said Marshall, who in his short five years in his post has turned the esteemed college into a university, only the province continues to refuse to let the college change its name to reflect that reality. Alberta has only 0.9 universities per one million residents whereas B.C. has 2.7, Saskatchewan 2.1 and Nova Scotia has 10.9, according to Statistics Canada figures from the 2006 Census.


I don't know what else to add. Unbelievable.

http://www.canada.com/calgaryherald/...7-7ac1b8ab26fe

[REDVAN]

I don't know a single person who wanted to go to university but didn't.

And those who couldn't get in went to Mount Royal to upgrade first, or went out of province, etc. Having lots of demand and low supply forces people to make other decisions, and it's not the worst thing in the world to have to move for a university degree.

[Azure]

I also agree with more funding, and essentially more schools.

But, there is nothing wrong with forcing kids to achieve higher marks in order to get into certain programs.

[NuclearFart]

It's a good thing thing to have higher admission standards. Letting in alot people who are more likely to fail in the first year or later, having poor quality students and so forth, cheapens the degree of those who came before them. Higher end institutions should strive to maintain some quality selection process, and having a limited supply of spots allows this. There's always DeVry for those who don't like it.

This article only talks about the hypothetical kid having 80% to get in, but then leaves it open to the reader to assume that all those who were rejected were of the same caliber. How many had 65% and applied?

Think admission standards are unreasonable here? Go over to China or Japan to see what real academic competition is like.

[Ice]

This is probably a stupid question, but is grade 12 in Canada part of high school? I understand strict admission requirements for a university, but kids can be turned away from finishing high school up there?

[MarchHare]

Alberta has only 0.9 universities per one million residents whereas B.C. has 2.7, Saskatchewan 2.1 and Nova Scotia has 10.9, according to Statistics Canada figures from the 2006 Census.

Number of universities per one million residents is a really stupid metric to use. Number of students is a much more meaningful measurement. In the case of Nova Scotia, for example, their number looks really large, but consider that only one NS school (Dalhousie) is of similar size to UofA or UofC. Most of their universities, such as St. Francis Xavier and Acadia, are small liberal arts schools with a student population of 4,000 or less, and they only offer undergraduate degrees.

[Azure]

Originally Posted by Ice

This is probably a stupid question, but is grade 12 in Canada part of high school? I understand strict admission requirements for a university, but kids can be turned away from finishing high school up there?

Well sure, if you fail your diploma's...usually worth 50% of your mark, or you do very poorly in class, and don't pass enough required courses to graduate, they'll make you do grade 12 all over again.

I think you need something like five 30 level courses to graduate....usually not a problem considering you can take physics, biology, or chemistry 30. Along with Math 30, or 31(calculus)....and English 30, and Social 30. Plus, more and more schools are offering other courses such as World History, World Religion, Physical Education....etc, etc....all in the 30 level range.

Not that hard to graduate, if you have good marks.

[MarchHare]

Originally Posted by Ice

This is probably a stupid question, but is grade 12 in Canada part of high school? I understand strict admission requirements for a university, but kids can be turned away from finishing high school up there?

No, grade 12 is part of high school here, it was just a bad analogy used by the writer of that article.

[truth14]

Article is out to lunch.

[Ice]

Originally Posted by Azure

Well sure, if you fail your diploma's...usually worth 50% of your mark, or you do very poorly in class, and don't pass enough required courses to graduate, they'll make you do grade 12 all over again.

I think you need something like five 30 level courses to graduate....usually not a problem considering you can take physics, biology, or chemistry 30. Along with Math 30, or 31(calculus)....and English 30, and Social 30. Plus, more and more schools are offering other courses such as World History, World Religion, Physical Education....etc, etc....all in the 30 level range.

Not that hard to graduate, if you have good marks.

Thanks for clarifying, that sounds the same as in the US. The article made it sound as if 12th grade was something you applied for instead of something you are entitled to as long as you pass 11th grade. It sounded as if there were kids possibly being turned away from getting their HS diploma.

[MarchHare]

Originally Posted by Ice

Thanks for clarifying, that sounds the same as in the US. The article made it sound as if 12th grade was something you applied for instead of something you are entitled to as long as you pass 11th grade. It sounded as if there were kids possibly being turned away from getting their HS diploma.

That's because the article was very poorly written.

[HotHotHeat]

Since when is post secondary education only for elite academics? This place sounds like some sort of old boys club...I can't believe people here agree with having so few universities. Completely backwards thinking. Let's just keep using China and Japan as benchmarks for the status quo...That should turn out great.

[Azure]

Originally Posted by HotHotHeat

Since when is post secondary education only for elite academics? I can't believe people here agree with having so few universities. Completely backwards thinking. Let's just keep using China and Japan as benchmarks for the status quo...That should turn out great.

Well, I would expect that if someone wanted to go into engineering, they'd have to have some pretty decent marks.

And rightly so.

[gottabekd]

Well, no matter how many universities you have, and how small the class sizes are (apparently that's the most important thing; quality of instructors has absolutely no bearing), there are still some who just don't belong in university. Hell, I just graduated from the U of C, and I am embarrassed that so many idiots will have the same degree as me.

I don't know how to "fix" it. I think it starts all the way back in junior high. If you aren't a good student in junior high and high school, you aren't going to turn it around for post secondary.

[HotHotHeat]

Originally Posted by Azure

Well, I would expect that if someone wanted to go into engineering, they'd have to have some pretty decent marks.

And rightly so.

Is 80% not decent?

[MarchHare]

Since when is post secondary education only for elite academics?

Post-secondary education and university education are not the same thing. The former should be available to anyone, the latter is (or at least ought to be) reserved for elite academics.

For the past 30 years or so, there has been far too much pressure on students to attend university when most of them would be better served in life by completing a 1-2 year college program or learning a trade. A post-secondary academic education is not for everyone.

[HotHotHeat]

Originally Posted by MarchHare

Post-secondary education and university education are not the same thing. The former should be available to anyone, the latter is (or at least ought to be) reserved for elite academics.

For the past 30 years or so, there has been far too much pressure on students to attend university when most of them would be better served in life by completing a 1-2 year college program or learning a trade. A post-secondary academic education is not for everyone.

The article states that more than 5000 students were turned away from Mt. Royal College. I agree having high benchmarks for certain programs is important, obviously some students aren't cut out to be in those programs...But were not talking about that. Nursing programs and 2 year diploma programs are not available to people that could achieve success.

[ricoFlame]

the benchmarks are so high because there arn't enough spots in alberta. this isn't that hard to figure out. we need either more institutions or expansion of the universities, colleges and trade schools that are already here.

[Dan02]

Having spent the last 7ish years now at MRC and the UofC, if anything the admission requirements are too low right now, I know a few people at the UofC who will be graduating soon who have no business in the field they are in and will not be a strong asset to their employer. Part of it is that for the most part university courses are too easy.

The good students complain that they are hard but the reality is, yes it is hard for you to get your A instead of a B and if you give 100% effort you are going to be challenged. However, you can still float through the classes and get a C with relative ease, even in some of the harder courses and for the most part it doesn't matter if you graduate with a 2.1 or a 3.6.

[jammies]

I'd like to see the gov't set up a world-class university in Red Deer, along with plenty of student housing (ie - subsidized). Set up a 30 year plan where by 2040 it's the biggest in the province, spending some of that oil money on something that will have a long-term benefit, as opposed to yet another round of paved rural highways so Farmer Dan doesn't have to get rock chips on his giant truck.

Turning Red Deer into a university town would be a huge economic plus, with the added benefit of a better educated populace; right now Alberta is leeching university grads from outside the province to keep up with demand, but continuing to rely on this happening is short-sighted. Of course, spending big money on something like this won't go over well with the rural powerbase of the government (or, for that matter, with some of the urban folks who think that any kind of government spending is bad), so instead we'll get plenty of rhetoric about "free enterprise" needing to close the gap, which so far has gotten us some technical schools and that's about it.