The study decline in value of the university degree is a quiet Failure of the Liberal government at Queens Park. However government mismanagement is not the only cause of a decline in esteem of the average university education. The rise of private for profit online universities like the University of Phoenix compound an already bad situation and turn it into a downward spiral.
Yet this may just be the beginning. The next phase of the Reaching Higher plan has a target of providing 70 per cent of the Ontario population with a university degree.
Much of the population is employed in industry, retail or services; why is it an advantage for many of these people to have degrees? Why is the government continuing to emphasize quantity of education over quality?
In many ways, Ontario has been giving education the “Field of Dreams” approach: if you build an educated population, industry and commerce will come.
The problem is that we have been building bigger, not better.
