Well This...

...is totally unexpected. /sarc

Canadian Council on Learning warns of possible labour crisis if education system not fixed

"The Canadian Council on Learning says Canada could be facing a labour crisis if the education system is not fixed.

The country is already facing a labour crunch as baby boomers retire but that could turn into a labour crisis according to the council's president, Dr. Paul Cappon.

He told 680News that there's no strategy to properly train people to fill in all the vacant jobs."

[---]

"He added that it could take a year to coordinate efforts across the country so the federal government needs to take action now."

Report dubs Canadian post-secondary education dysfunctional'

"Using international standardized testing, the report notes 25% of Canadian children entering school lack the foundation they need to build literacy and math skills.

What's more, 42% of adult Canadians fall below international literacy standards. The council estimates there will be three million Canadian adults below the literacy standard within 20 years.

While Canadian high school students perform above average in Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development testing, the scores have been falling in recent years, the report shows.

The report calls Canada's post-secondary system "dysfunctional," noting there are no national standards by which to judge colleges and universities.

The federal government -- because of its lack of jurisdiction over post-secondary education -- is limited to funding research, which can skew universities' mandates toward "a greater concentration on research profiles of faculty and institutions" at the expense of learning and teaching."

Report gives failing grades to Canada's education system

"Federal involvement in post-secondary education is limited to funding of research that has skewed the mission of universities and colleges, the report says, leaving schools able to focus on promoting the research profiles of their faculty rather than focusing on teaching students.

The result are schools with no quality assurance system, the report says.

"Canada is unique in the developed world for having no national strategy for (post-secondary education), no acknowledged and accepted goals, no benchmarks, and no public reporting of resulting based on widely accepted measures," the report says."

Report calls for national education leadership in Canada

"Canada has an "enormous vacuum" at the centre of its national education leadership and should fill it with an intergovernmental council, says a prominent educator.

The recommendation is parting advice from Paul Cappon, president and CEO of the Canadian Council on Learning, which will wrap up its operations March 31 when federal funding dries up.

A final report entitled "What is the Future of Learning in Canada?" is being released Tuesday.

"One of our problems in Canada, of course, is that we have very little information nationally about how we're doing," said Cappon, who is both a medical doctor and has a PhD in sociology.

"For example, we don't even know how many graduates we have in any particular year in any particular area, whether it's fisheries or forestry or carpentry, so we can't match labour market demand to labour market supply.

"Those kinds of national reporting systems of data are very important for a country to be able to decide where to put its resources and to be able to move forward.""

Perhaps our funding needs to be more targeted, too. The acquisition of useless BAs should not be encouraged, while technical fields and trades should be.