Trillium Scholarship Fund

Last week the Progressive Conservatives announced their post-secondary education platform, stating that they would slash the province’s  “Trillium Scholarship Fund” in its infancy. 

            Introduced last year, the fund was established to provide 75 highly regarded foreign PhD students with funding for their education in Ontario, according to the Brock Press.  Currently, the program provides these individuals with $40,000 a year for four years.  While the Ontario government was to invest $20 million, $10 million was to come from the universities. 

            According to the Brock Press, the PCs would like to divert this $30 million to middle class families, making it easier for them to access OSAP loans.

            This week’s Economist included a special report entitled “The Great Mismatch”, written by Matthew Bishop.  Bishop stresses that, “In the world of work unemployment is high, yet skilled and talented people are in short supply.”  The Conservative policy emphasizes this sentiment.  In a world where houses go up on the market for one dollar a pop, there is no need for small groups of weathered academics flipping through the tattered pages of dusty hieroglyphics. 

According to the scholarship program, this country has a “new knowledge based economy.”  I contend with the importance that is placed on knowledge for growth.  

This scholarship fund is not an incentive to those who will benefit Canada’s economy, but rather one that sends a come hither motion to those who will simply continue self-obsessed research on Canadian soil.

           

            Although this aspect of the Conservative platform may simply be a microcosm of something that must be accessible to a much larger segment of the population to be taken seriously, it is a starting point.

            Canada should instead look to pull from its own population if it wants to cure its economic woes.  Specifically, members of this highlighted underprivileged “middle class” require more opportunities; those just out of reach of achieving financial assistance.  Rather than extending our lens to specialists beyond our borders, we could just as easily be looking at ways to foster the specific labour force we need close to home.  This country is desperate for skilled workers. 

In 2007, The Conference Board of Canada issued a report entitled, “Ontario’s Looming Labour Shortage Challenges.”  The report highlighted that in 2025, the province, “…could face a shortfall of 364,000 workers.”  It appears as if we are slowly falling off of a precipice.

While holding the bargaining ship of funding, the Ontario government could easily encourage our middle class to pursue careers in trades.  This would allow the province to fill the gaping holes of unemployment within these sectors.

Finally, one does not solve brain drain simply by forcing another nation to endure its wounds.  We cannot merely pluck intellectuals from around the globe, but instead must look inwardly for reasons as to why our citizens have flown the coop.

Some say it is illegal to pick a trillium in this province.  Ontario’s Trillium Scholarship Fund may in fact be an exception to the rule.

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Liberals promise to extend teachers college

This past month, Ontario Liberals announced their plan to expand teachers college from one to two years if reelected.  In doing so, the party has turned a blind eye to a year’s worth of practical learning environments; determined that instruction trumps experience.  However, passion for teaching is not bound between the pages of a textbook.

As it stands, Ontarians interested in pursuing a career in teaching must either complete a four-year teaching degree or add a year of teacher’s college to an undergraduate degree in a separate field.  These students are expected to spend approximately 40 days learning in a classroom setting.

While the Liberal plan may sound appealing in theory and on paper, the needs of the individuals training to become teachers are lost behind a veil of numbers and promises.  Carleton students know full well, simply by flipping through the pages of their agenda, the astronomical costs of tuition fees in this province.  The Canadian Federation of Students places the average undergraduate tuition fees of Ontario students at $6,307.

Graduating students in Ontario thus already find themselves thrust into a job market, bogged down by debt.  Teachers, in particular, have difficulty staying afloat.  This past February, a study from the Ontario College of Teachers revealed that, “two-thirds of education graduates from Ontario’s class of 2009 found themselves unemployed or underemployed in the following year.”  Their unemployment rate now sits at 24 per cent. In response to this staggering overflow John Milloy, Minister of Training, Colleges and Universities was forced to put a cap on funding for those entering teacher’s college.  There appears to be too many teachers to begin with.

With the addition of another year of classroom instruction, the minister insists that teachers require further training in bullying and discipline. However, what use are lessons when teachers may not even be given the chance to teach them to anyone?

Currently, teachers in training find what should be open doors slammed in their faces.  Clutching these door handles are the very individuals who they are meant to be replacing.  Apparently, baby boomers are not showing much sign of slowing down.  Retirement rates are down in Ontario’s teaching industry.  All the while, the province’s student-aged children population continues to shrink.

If teacher’s college is to be reconfigured there should be a newfound focus on practical application rather than lessons taught with chalk in hand.  We should look into paid internships, apprenticeships and the like, rather than spending more time telling others what they should expect to encounter before they are finally thrust into the lion’s den.  This will also allow teaching students to evaluate if the real job is truly right for them.

When teachers eventually do find employment, I am convinced that it is not the certificates mounted on the wall behind them that will make them fine educators, but rather their own personal drive. 

I myself attended a private high school, a place where it was not essential that an educator have a teaching degree.  I soon learned how little this mattered.  Teachers distanced themselves from one another not by their education, but rather through what I perceived to be instinct and experience.

The teachers of tomorrow need not be put through an additional twelve months of lessons and sensitivity training and rather should be cast into classrooms they themselves can manage, as soon as possible.

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