Canada's University System

[Shazam]

Originally Posted by Azure

My lack of writing skills, or the lack of practice & teaching goes all the way back to high school.

Too much emphasis on theory, not enough of knowing how to write properly.

I admire everyone on here who is good at writing. Textcritic is my favorite. I don't even care what the subject matter is. I just enjoy reading his posts.

Really. See, I find his writing mostly terrible.

[Azure]

One of the biggest issues with getting people into the trades & STEM fields happens in the high school years.

Simply put we do not look at those fields as being 'cultured' enough, and instead push more students towards humanities, social sciences or something else despite the obvious lack of jobs that are available for someone with those degrees.

Is there something wrong with the trades? Everyone I know that works in those industries has a good life. You are also more likely to start your own company when you have a trades background compared to almost any other field.

[Shazam]

Originally Posted by MarchHare

The problem with universities, if there is one, is that too many people in today's society confuse them with vocational schools and think the purpose of higher education should be to prepare students for a specific career. In the 1000+ years that universities have existed, that's only been a recent phenomenon in the last few decades. Prior to that, it was understood that universities developed well-rounded academic thinkers.

About 90 years ago, my grandfather completed a Master's degree from Cambridge with what many posters here would describe as a "useless" liberal arts degree in ancient Greek and Latin. Outside of academia, what kind of job does that prepare him for? And yet he enjoyed a very successful and varied career working for the British government, management positions in the private sector, and serving on the boards of several non-profits. Until relatively recently, it was understood that a university degree -- any degree -- was demonstrable proof that the graduate had developed solid critical thinking, research, and writing skills and had a well-rounded education in a wide variety of subject areas. This was very highly valued by employers.

If you belong to the Boomer generation (when a much lower percentage of the population attained post-secondary degrees), it was typical that almost every university graduate would be actively recruited right out of school and fast-tracked into management positions. University graduates were seen as the future leaders in every organization. Seeing the career trajectories of university graduates vs. non-graduates, many Baby Boomers pushed their children into universities whether they belonged there or not, creating a huge glut of university grads and watering down the value of a degree. Most jobs shouldn't require undergraduate (or higher) degrees, but that was seen as the best road to career success. So now we have a situation where degrees are undervalued because too many people have them. Entry level jobs that required only a high school education 40 years ago now require a bachelor's degree (often in a very specific subject) for no legitimate reason other than employers can make that a requirement and still attract enough suitable applicants. At the same time, there's this widespread attitude that an academic education should substitute for job-specific vocational training, and any degrees outside of a select few subjects with a direct career path (STEM fields, engineering, business, medicine, law, etc.) are looked down upon as undesirable. That was never the purpose of universities.

Occupations have become more specialized. The base knowledge required to do some jobs at even a junior level has increased massively. Unless places like SAIT are willing to do 3 or 4 year programs they're never going to fulfill that role.

And there is a world of difference between taking a couple of philosophy courses and pursuing the degree. I do think it's really important to branch out of one's major but that only seems to work one way - take some "liberal arts" courses. I don't think I had any philosophy majors in my first year CS functional programming course.

You do like to complain about how poorly things were run in the past - maybe that's because the people in gov't weren't suited to the positions. I'm sorry but a person with the qualifications of your father should never be in positions like deciding fiscal policy, for instance.

[blankall]

Originally Posted by Azure

One of the biggest issues with getting people into the trades & STEM fields happens in the high school years.

Simply put we do not look at those fields as being 'cultured' enough, and instead push more students towards humanities, social sciences or something else despite the obvious lack of jobs that are available for someone with those degrees.

Is there something wrong with the trades? Everyone I know that works in those industries has a good life. You are also more likely to start your own company when you have a trades background compared to almost any other field.

This is exactly the problem in Canada IMO. Even from an artistic/mental engagement perspective many high skilled "labour" jobs can be far more engaging than many "white collar" jobs. For example, if you're doing high end masonry work, you have far more opportunity to put artistic perspective into the work. As well, the planning and execution of the work is going to be very heavily engaging mentally. Now compare that to most office jobs, where your shuffling papers and sending out mindless emails constantly.

Yet Canadian society has created some kind of pseudo class system and tells kids that they need a university degree to not be considered lesser. This seems to be something we've inherited from our British roots. You don't see the same attitude in places like Germany, Scandinavia, etc...Canadian society desperately need an attitude adjustment.

[CliffFletcher]

Originally Posted by Azure

One of the biggest issues with getting people into the trades & STEM fields happens in the high school years.

Simply put we do not look at those fields as being 'cultured' enough, and instead push more students towards humanities, social sciences or something else despite the obvious lack of jobs that are available for someone with those degrees.

The education - and passion - of the great majority of teachers is in the humanities and social sciences. How many of them have any personal background or experience with technical fields or the trades?

This is what I mean by the class issue in Canadian society. Teachers, the media, politicians, public service policy-makers, cultural leaders almost all have white-collar, humanities and social sciences backgrounds. So that’s what they present as success. As normal.

We don’t have any profile or roadmap in this country for middle-class and a career in the trades. The roadmap is that if you want to make a decent living, you need to go to university for four years and then work at a desk. We wouldn’t need to lower standards and push for ever-higher university enrolment if we had other models for becoming a secure member of the middle class.

[Shazam]

The STEM fields aren't cultured enough? Wut.

Are doctors a "STEM field"?

The bloody median wage for a programmer is like $86K in the USA.

If anything I'd say students are being pushed into STEM. The problem is that STEM occupations are difficult for many, many people. A lot of it is very abstract, some of requires marthing.

Like here kiddies, take a look at this paper. I understand 100% of it. This is machine learning in the modern age. Can you get past the first page?

https://arxiv.org/pdf/1910.03678.pdf

[GirlySports]

It's about face and status. What two university graduated parents want their kid to be in trades?
We mock class systems like those in India but we're headed in exactly that direction.

[Nancy]

There is no shortage of people wanting to get into STEM fields, they are the most difficult to get into now. Getting into CS or Nursing at U of C requires a 92 average. Biochem is a 97. By comparison, an 80 is good enough to get you into Arts, and an 85 for Commerce.

https://choose.ucalgary.ca/generaldo...20Averages.pdf

[Fuzz]

Originally Posted by Nancy

There is no shortage of people wanting to get into STEM fields, they are the most difficult to get into now. Getting into CS or Nursing at U of C requires a 92 average. Biochem is a 97. By comparison, an 80 is good enough to get you into Arts, and an 85 for Commerce.

https://choose.ucalgary.ca/generaldo...20Averages.pdf

I'm curious how consistent these grades are from the past, say mid 90's? I think I remember it being as low as 70% or so. It must have been, or my brother and his friends would have never made it. Has there been a lot of grade inflation in high school? Or is it really that much harder to get in? Would be interesting to see if the bell curve has shifted throguh the years.

[RichieRich]

Originally Posted by Fuzz

I'm curious how consistent these grades are from the past, say mid 90's? I think I remember it being as low as 70% or so. It must have been, or my brother and his friends would have never made it. Has there been a lot of grade inflation in high school? Or is it really that much harder to get in? Would be interesting to see if the bell curve has shifted throguh the years.

Early 90’s a solid 70% high school average which included math and sciences was enough to get into most Canadian university science-oriented programs.

[Fuzz]

https://web.archive.org/web/19990128...cs/hschart.htm


1999. For some, it looks like it was as low as 60%. General studies had a guaranteed admission of 70%. Even Engineers could maybe get in with that. Though once in General Studies you could work your way up to anything.

[blankall]

Originally Posted by Nancy

There is no shortage of people wanting to get into STEM fields, they are the most difficult to get into now. Getting into CS or Nursing at U of C requires a 92 average. Biochem is a 97. By comparison, an 80 is good enough to get you into Arts, and an 85 for Commerce.

https://choose.ucalgary.ca/generaldo...20Averages.pdf

There wasn't a single student in our school who had a 97% average. I had no idea grade inflation was that out of control.

I'm guessing this is based on grade 11 marks, before the standardized diploma exams come into play? Have they inflated those as well?

[undercoverbrother]

Originally Posted by blankall

There wasn't a single student in our school who had a 97% average. I had no idea grade inflation was that out of control.

I'm guessing this is based on grade 11 marks, before the standardized diploma exams come into play? Have they inflated those as well?

I believe those marks are grade 12 requirements.

Grade 11 can get you early acceptance, my daughter's marks got her accepted into Bachelor of Science in Kinesiology, but she needed to keep those marks through grade 12. She landed a 91 as her average, I think the cut off landed around 89-90

[blankall]

Originally Posted by undercoverbrother

I believe those marks are grade 12 requirements.

Grade 11 can get you early acceptance, my daughter's marks got her accepted into Bachelor of Science in Kinesiology, but she needed to keep those marks through grade 12. She landed a 91 as her average, I think the cut off landed around 89-90

That is so absurd. Is a student who only has an 88% average in high school really not capable of excelling in a science field? Marks are pretty meaningless beyond a certain threshold.

This also rewards students for taking fluff classes. My school offered an AP program. You were definitely not getting a 98% average in those classes, and all the students in the class were the top students so curving wasn't going to help you.

[Nancy]

Originally Posted by Fuzz

https://web.archive.org/web/19990128...cs/hschart.htm


1999. For some, it looks like it was as low as 60%. General studies had a guaranteed admission of 70%. Even Engineers could maybe get in with that. Though once in General Studies you could work your way up to anything.

I am surprised by those U of C numbers from 1999. When I went to the University in the mid/late '80s (not the U of C) I recall the admission average for Commerce and Engineering were in the '80s.

There is some grade inflation showing up in the Fraser Institute data, but not to the degree that the U of C averages from 1999 would indicate. The overall Grade 12 average was 69.9 in 1999 versus 74.1 in 2019. (Exam mark + school versus exam difference)



https://www.fraserinstitute.org/site...2020-13569.pdf

https://www.fraserinstitute.org/site...FullReport.pdf

[Fuzz]

Originally Posted by Nancy

I am surprised by those U of C numbers from 1999. When I went to the University in the mid/late '80s (not the U of C) I recall the admission average for Commerce and Engineering were in the '80s.

There is some grade inflation showing up in the Fraser Institute data, but not to the degree that the U of C averages from 1999 would indicate. The overall Grade 12 average was 69.9 in 1999 versus 74.1 in 2019. (Exam mark + school versus exam difference)

https://www.fraserinstitute.org/site...2020-13569.pdf

https://www.fraserinstitute.org/site...FullReport.pdf

I seem to remember through the 90's entrance requirements dropped a lot as the Universities expanded.

[CliffFletcher]

Originally Posted by Nancy

The overall Grade 12 average was 69.9 in 1999 versus 74.1 in 2019. (Exam mark + school versus exam difference)

That seems like a big jump. My graduating class at Wise Wood in the late 80s had something like 500 students, and I’d be surprised if more than 20 had averages higher than 90. Each semester they would post the first-class honours list of students with an 85 per cent or higher average, and there were usually around 50 or so names on the list.

[MarchHare]

Originally Posted by Shazam

You do like to complain about how poorly things were run in the past - maybe that's because the people in gov't weren't suited to the positions. I'm sorry but a person with the qualifications of your father should never be in positions like deciding fiscal policy, for instance.

Are you accidentally confusing me with another poster? I don't think I have a history here of constantly complaining about how things were run in the past. I also didn't mention anything about my father, but for the record, he's a semi-retired senior business executive. I suspect that's precisely the type of qualifications someone like you thinks the people deciding fiscal policy should have.

[GirlySports]

In the late 80s and 90s, out of 500 high school graduates, not much more than 100 went to University.


And that's another thing that's gone extinct, the posting of first class honors.

[wireframe]

Grades used to as a barrier to keep people out of university, and thereore out of jobs, is a huge concern. My dad is one of the smartest people I know and he went to university with a high school average in the 60% range. He's a high school teacher now and, by all accounts, an excellent one. It's worrying that people are being kept out of good jobs simply by not having high enough grades in high school. I know parent's who require their kids after school tutors to have a master's degree for god sake.



This whole phenomenon is called credentialism. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creden...onal_inflation