Thursday, February 5th 2009

By andrew dawdy

In the past several months, North America has been experiencing turbulent economic times. The current economic recession is sending people back to school. Statistics show that there has been a general increase in demand for post secondary education for some years now. However, this year in particular has a surge of returning students looking to improve there resume before re-entering the job market.

With the bailouts of the auto and finance sector in the news it doesn’t come as a surprise that jobs are becoming more and more difficult to find. Due to this scarcity of job opportunities, demand for higher learning has risen. In Ontario and particularly in the Greater Toronto Area, applications to universities have been on a sharp incline. There has been a substantial increase in mature student applications to Ontario universities. McMaster university has seen an application increase of eight per cent. Paul Genest, president of the Council of Ontario Universities has stated, “part of [the increase] has to do with the recession, and students recognizing that this is a good time to go back to school.” However, Genest also goes on to explain that there has been recent immigration to the Greater Toronto Area (GTA) that has contributed to the increase in applications to GTA based schools.

The recession has not only affected the number of university applications but it has also affected the programs with which people are applying. The current economy has had drastically negative effects on business and students have obviously taken this in to consideration. Applications to Ontario business programs have decreased by 9.1 per cent. With this decrease in business applications there has been an increase in applications to programs that involve healthcare services and other more science based studies.

Nevertheless, numbers are rising and many believe that with increased demand for university education, there will come more denials of admittance. However Genest stated that, “no qualified student will be turned away because of a lack of funding.” In fact, in the recent federal budget proposal the Conservative government has made a two billion dollar commitment to campus renewals for post secondary institutions. Some of this money could be used to accommodate the increase in students. Furthermore, Premier Dalton McGuinty has indicated that the provincial government of Ontario is willing to match federal investments for this particular part of the budget. Paul was enthused by these details and affirmed, “All of this commitment to infrastructure investment … on colleges and universities is very positive as far as we are concerned.”

Tags: Council of Ontario, Economy, Jobs