The bar has already been raised and it would be exceptionally hard to lower it again. Think of all those people out there who already have degrees - those are the people new workers have to compete with when entering the workforce. You can't erase the past few decades that have seen a huge growth in the amount of people with post-secondary educations.
You can't erase the past but that does not mean we should continue to making the same mistakes either. We have pumped far too many liberal arts and science major who lack relevant job skills, wasting the resources of our education system and further eroding our economic competitiveness by having a workforce that's mismatched with potential employers. Now is the time to fix it. Instead of building a new university, let's put emphasis on our college system. Applied degrees will provide just as much opportunity to their holders as those with a BSc or BA.
Regardless of that fact, education is about more than preparing yourself for the workforce. It is about making a good and informed citizen. I see an education in any field as a good thing. It's all about bettering yourself, which in the end benefits society.
Nobody would disagree with that. But that does not erase the fact that our education systems should also produce good workers. If not, we'll all be starving in the decades to come.
It's quite fashionable to attack people with or pursuing liberal arts degrees because they're not really trained for a specific job - but they haven't spent 3-4 years doing nothing. They've learnt many things presented to them from many different angles - a repository of knowledge that they can draw upon when reading the news, going to the polls, watching a play, going to an art gallery, etc.
Those are all valuable efforts at self-development. Yet, the key question is, to what extent does that individual's development put us ahead as a society, after all we are heavily subsidizing his/her education for that reason.
Note that I am not attacking the value of a liberal arts education. Those grads are certainly needed in our society. I am arguing that our mix of graduates is screwed up. We don't produce enough applied degree graduates (from the college programs) and professional degree grads (engineering, business, etc). A big part of why we don't produce enough of these individuals is that governments have found it far cheaper to create a space for a BA than to spend the resources of 5 BA students to create one undergraduate engineering spot.
And many of your goals and experiences should be included in every university program. Indeed, my engineering program at Ryerson has a significant amount of breadth requirements (8 one semester courses)...enough to get a minor at most schools should they have been focused on one area. We should be promoting a liberal arts components for other programs to create more well rounded grads. We don't necessarily need to pump out more BAs for that.
I doubt Toronto's cultural renaissance could have happened without a substantial number of people with backgrounds in the liberal arts taking an interest in the cultural scene.
I disagree. While liberal arts grads may have helped a bit, our cultural renaissance has a lot to do with the fact that we have built an extremely diverse society in Toronto....and that has nothing to do with education. We can thank Citizenship and Immigration for that.
You're assuming that everyone who wants a liberal arts degree can afford to just go elsewhere, or that the programs they want to pursue will continue to be offered elsewhere.
I said few would go elsewhere. Hopefully, there will be a larger percentage who will choose from the programs that have been bolstered...at the college level.
Some people just don't want to be doctors, teachers, trades people, business people, or lawyers. There are a good deal of students in university now who probably would rather be in college or in an apprenticeship, but you should not use that as an excuse to clamp down on the liberal arts ruining it for the people who actually want to be there, and who will actually take something from it.
Again, should society then be subsidizing their efforts? When we need scientist, engineers, plumbers, electricians, mechanics, financiers does it make any sense that we pay billions into catering to 18 year old who just feel entitled to learning what they want? In any other part of the world, that suggestion would be considered crazy. Here in Canada, nobody even challenges the notion that an individual should not take the needs of society into account while developing his career prospects although his/her society is footing the bill.
Our society needs to ask itself where it would be without the liberal arts. They create critical thinkers. For example, a background in history allows one deeper insight into the present, a background in English literature allows one a deeper understanding of rhetoric, etc. They increase or country's competitiveness in many ways. For example, in the age of globalization, companies and governments need people who not only speak other languages but understand other cultures. There are many many examples I could give about how the arts are beneficial to our society in general.
Again, not disputing the value of a liberals arts education just the mix....a mix which has been created by the deliberate choices of our policy makers. Creating a new university campus just to pump out more BAs destined to work as data-entry clerks is one such decision.
Plus, the age of going through one post-secondary program is over for a lot of people. A lot of people go to both university and college, pursue post-graduate work, or pursue professional degrees. The best way to prepare people for the workforce might be to expand the amount of post-graduate college programs offered in Ontario. For example, if I have a degree in English literature, maybe I'd want to go do a one year program at a college to learn about the publishing industry, or editing, or PR, or creative writing, etc. More - not less - education is the key to making Ontario more attractive in an increasingly educated world.
That's exactly my point. Those are the programs we should be expanding ie. Seneca@York, Guelph-Humber, etc. Those are programs that impart a liberal education while imparting practical skills. Why should the government instead run-off and build a whole new campus for a liberal arts education? Worse still, it's supposed to be a no-frills campus. Can you guess what the educational experience and value will be of an individual who got a 'no frills' education?
I can understand the attack on the arts. They're unfortunately seen as pointless - interestingly a lot of the time by the same people who bemoan the lack of knowledge about history and spelling in our younger generations (these people then go on to unfairly blame immigration/the Internet more often than not).
I don't blame the arts, internet or immigration for the lack of historical knowlege and spelling in our youth. I blame the Ministry of Education and it's piss poor curriculum for K-12. We have serious problems in our education system if we are using BSc/BAs to impart proper spelling, grammar and basic history.
