Private vs Public Community Colleges

At the end of last week Everest College, a private college, was shut down by a Ontario provincial regulator stating there was some concern over their capacity to be financially responsible (CBC). Since then there have been numerous articles in the main street media discussing the college's failure and what it means for the students who were enrolled in the various programs. CBC had an article this morning where former students and one ex-instructor wondered why the college had not been closed earlier (yahoo). They, in the article, suggested that the college was operating a scam and that it was more interested in profits than education.

What surprises me is that people are surprised that some of the private colleges may be sub-standard.  I am almost shocked at the naivety of people who believed that they would get a high quality education from a private college that at best has minimal accountability to the community. These colleges are privately operated with no government funding. Regardless of how wonderful their brochures, television ads or internet sites look and sound, the colleges exist for one reason. They exist to make a profit for their investors. Their only source of income is the tuition that students pay.  It should not be a surprise therefore, that at least some of the private colleges do everything they can to ensure that students, regardless of their skills or capacities, are encouraged to keep on attending. And if that means making assignments easier or giving lots of extensions etc - that is what happens. I have talked to a number of people who have taught at either a private university or college, and they have all told me that the pressure on the part of the administration to give passing grades to all students is considerable.

I have no doubt that there are many highly competent and dedicated instructors working in the private college system. They, unfortunately, are getting paid considerably less than any comparable instructor at a Ontario community college. I am equally sure that there are numerous students enrolled in a private college who work incredibly hard and who would do well in any post secondary institution. I am sure that the vast majority of the students who attend colleges systems such as Everest deserve far better than they are getting. But they, their parents, their employers or high school guidance teachers need to be aware of the dangers of private educational systems. It is obscene that people are allowed - no encouraged - to borrow money to attend a post secondary institution only to find out their education is worthless.

The public however, also need to be aware that within the publically funded college system, some things are not that different. The peculiarity of the government funding mechanism (at least as I understand it) ensures that retention of students from first to second semester and into the third semester is critical. College recruitment strategies are complex, expensive and consume senior administrative staff for portions of the year. At the college I taught at, the number of students applying for specific programs as compared to previous years was a topic of frequent discussion amongst Dean, Chairs and Coordinators. All of the staff (part time and full time) were given regular updates in terms of intake.

There is no doubt in my mind that the college graduated students who were clearly not qualified to work in their chosen field. I would like to believe that the controls, evaluations and accountability systems built into the community college system in Ontario ensures that these are rare occurrences. I don't think they are.  It would also be wonderful if there were enough good jobs for the graduates. In the two programs I taught in - this was not true. Far too many students after graduations end up working in part time jobs with little hope of advancement.

We have created a post secondary educational system where it is assumed that (1) everyone has the right to go to college or university and (2) that everyone needs to go. Neither belief is true. We need to re-think why people go to school. In the meantime we need to make sure that perspective students, regardless of what school they plan to attend, know the truth.

Thinking about Hitchhiking

I am not quite ready to be planning my summer trip. With all of the snow shovelling that I have had to do in the past few weeks combined with daily highs of minus 20 degrees Celsius (plus wind chill), it is rather hard to think about hitchhiking across Canada. On the other hand there are brief signs that the wanderlust part of my sub-conscious brain is almost ready to take control over the rest of my grey matter.  When I wake up in the middle of the night there are faint rememberings  of dreams of being outside the Flying J in Winnipeg, of standing at the chaotic intersection at the west end of Brandon or that first glorious view of the Rockies just past Calgary but these snatches of images are too brief to hold on to. But I know the need to travel is close because have started to read, as my bedtime reading, travel books. About this time every year I get the yearning to read about other people's adventures. My preference is to read about people who sail, usually alone, around the world.  I don't know why these stories attract me - I have little interest in sailing but at sometime during the cold days of late January or early February I am drawn to these types of stories.

In the last month or so I have read three travel/adventure books. The first was about people who row across oceans, either the Pacific or Atlantic. The second book that I read was written by a man who had sailed from New Zealand to the Antarctica and back again. The third one that I am just finishing is about a young woman who wanted to walk through Papua New Guinea. It is never clear to me why any of them  do what they do. What I do find amazing however, is how little planning they seem to do for these trips that not only take some time to complete, isolate them from any human contact but also put their lives at a very real risk.

People who row across oceans do prepare for months in advance in part because they need to build up the muscles and the skills needed to row for ten to fifteen hours a day for weeks. Because there is an international federation of rowers and a number of competitions,  there are clear rules about how to be safe. Some of those rules seem to be a little use. Their boats, for the most part are sophisticated pieces of equipment that amongst other things, after being completely flipped over by huge wave, need to be self-righting. But universally the rowers complain about the food that they have brought with them, the lack of space to sleep and store their stuff (especially when it is a two person crew) and the skin break down on their derrières from seating on a wet seat. Some of them seem to spend a fair amount of time, while on the ocean, trying to find solutions to this problem. In addition the technology they bring with them for both navigation and staying in touch with people seems to fail far more often than it works. Personally if I was going to get into a boat only six meters long and spend sixty days in it working my butt off, I would make sure that I liked the food that I brought with me and that the technology was hardier than much of it seems. I would also make sure that the seat would not cause skin breakdown.  

The man sailing to the Antarctica only survived because various scientific stations on that forbidding continent helped him rebuild his boat and re-supplied him. His sail boat flipped at least three times. Not only did his electronics fail but even his watches (accurate time telling is critical to knowing where you are if one is using a sextant) did not work well! His organization was so bad and so rushed that his supplies were badly stored on board. He could not find some basic necessities because they were buried under other things, the head (bathroom) was full of food stuff and not useable for its original purpose and the gasoline (for his outboard motor) spilled.

And finally for the young American travelling through Papua New Guinea there were a number of times that she was rescued and taken care of by either missionaries or employees of the various western companies that are there exploiting the wealth of that struggling country. Her pack weighted 43 pounds but I am not clear, other than a mosquito net, what she had in it. The fact that she survived had more to do with the innate goodness of other people than her planning or self-survival skills.

In reading these books it often feels as if I spend more time planning for my five or six day trip across Canada than these people do who are planning on traveling in much harsher conditions for longer periods of time. And on occasion I wonder if I think too much about my equipment I think I need to have. Or if I spend too much time preparing for the trip by making sure I have signs to attract drivers etc. Maybe it would be more of adventure if I went with less stuff (or the wrong stuff) and had to suffer a little bit more. And then I figuratively slap my face and realize there is nothing wrong in having stuff that will keep me reasonably dry and warm. And if carrying a water filter and a wee stove is a bit much - having a cup of soup and some tea after a long day is pretty nice.

Malls and Terrorists

Other than discussing who might win an Oscar and then this morning talking about who did win and what they wore, one of the other important news item of this past weekend was the musing by spokesperson of Al-Shabab towards the end of their 75 minute rant, that the West Edmonton Mall might be a suitable terrorist target (Globe and Mail). And I suspect they are right. In fact almost every large mall in Canada and in fact the western world would be an easy and effective target for anyone who wanted to get attention by killing the maximum number of people. Attacking such a mall would certainly  get a lot of attention. And that of course, is the whole point of committing a terrorist attack. The terrorist are only effective if we pay attention to them. The reason why a terrorist would even mention the possibility of an assault upon a Canadian mall is not so they want us to know an attach is imminent, it is so we spend intellectual, emotional and physical resources dealing with people's fears.

In raising up the possibility that the West Edmonton Mall would be a potential target, Al-Shabab has done exactly that. Former members of Canada's multitude of security agencies (did you know that we have six secret security agencies?) and former soldiers who now work for think tanks or private security companies will join the Prime Minister in using the threat to validate our moral panic (definition) and thereby expand the powers of the state security apparatus. As I have said in other blogs, it is not surprising when people who have a vested interest in security articulate the need to spend tax dollars in their specific field of commercial interest. 

Which is not to say that the threat is not a legitimate threat, but rather that our first response should not be to draw up our knees up around our ears (for those who are still flexible enough to do so) and wail that somebody needs to do more to protect us. While I have never been to the West Edmonton Mall, from pictures it looks as chaotic as any other mall. It is designed to ensure ease of access. There probably is no way to ensure that it is a completely safe place. Even if one installed guards and metal detectors at every entrance there must be a hundred other ways to gain access. While hiring that many new guards would be a boon to all of those graduates from the various Law and Justice courses in the community colleges across Canada who cannot get a job with a police force, it would not make one shopper safer from a terrorist attack. What would make it safer would be to set up programs that assist those who are struggling with coping with their lives so that they don't feel a need to become radical. But I digress.

This morning CTV News had an online item whose headlined screamed "Canada 'completely unprepared' for large-scale terror attack"(CTV). It turns out, at least according to John Thompson who is a "terror and security expert", that amongst other things that make us unprepared is that both the police and the army reserve units do not have large (or any) reserves of ammunition!  That is - we don't have enough bullets. I find that surprising. We seem to spend a lot of money on both our police and our armed services. The Globe and Mail, in September of 2014 reported that the defense budget is about $18 billion (Globe and Mail); the Fraser Institute released a report in that same month that states that "total expenditures on policing in Canada in 2012 were $13.5 billion" (Fraser Institute). I am not a fan of guns and have on occasion wondered if we would be better off if some police officers had no bullets in their guns; I am also not a strong advocate for my tax dollars being used to buy things that kill people in other countries but if we must spend a total of $31.5 billion on attempting to make this world a safer place - perhaps buying a few extra bullets would be a good use for some of that money.

There are a hundred reasons why we are unprepared for a terrorist attach in Canada - including the fact that it is almost inconceivable to us that we as kind, caring, giving and concerned world citizens would ever attract the ire of any other people. If we started to recognize that more and more of the world do not see us defined as such - we would perhaps be better prepared.