UW Gazette, June 12, 1996
     
     This report by Gavin Wilson is reprinted from UBC
Reports, newspaper of the University of British Columbia:
     
     University academic programs should be expanded in B.C.
because they produce graduates who have greater success in
finding jobs and earn better wages than graduates of commu
nity colleges or vocational and technical schools.
     This is the conclusion of a new study called The
Economic Benefits of Post-Secondary Training and Education
in B.C.: An Outcomes Assessment, written by UBC economist
Prof. Robert Allen.
     Using census data and Statistics Canada surveys, Allen
measured the labour market success of post-secondary
graduates bsed on actual outcomes - who finds jobs and what
salaries they earn.
     Allen's study refutes the findings of the B.C. Labour
Force Development Board's report Training for What?, which
last fall recommended a large expansion in technical and
vocational training programs over academic university
programs.
     The board, an agency of the B.C. Ministry of Labour and
consisting largely of business and labour representatives,
based their findings almost entirely on an inadequate job
forecasting model rther than actual labour market outcomes
in B.C., Allen said.
     As a result, their conclusions were "seriously off the
mark," he said.
     "The board takes it almost as a matter of faith that
technical trainees get jobs at high wages that use the
skills taught in their programs, while arts graduates, for
example, face high unemployment and find only low wage work
in jobs that do not use their university training.
     "In fact, however, these impressions of labour market
outcomes are grossly inaccurate," Allen said.
     Statistics Canada figures quoted in Allen's report show
that unemployment rates are actually higher for graduates of
technical and vocational programs than for almost all uni
veristy programs, including most arts programs.
     The study also demonstrates that university graduates
almost always earned higher incomes than graduates of other
post-secondary institutions.
     For example, women with bachelor's degrees in almost
every field earn more than women with community college or
technical and vocational training. This includes humanities
graduates.
     Men with university degrees, meanwhile, often earn less
than men with technical certificates in their 20s, but
generally surpass them by a large margin as they get older.
     And while it is true that fine arts graduates do make
less than other graduates, earning high incomes is not
necessarily the motivation of many of these students. In
fact, humanities students who aimed for a high income
generally got one, while those less motivated by financial
reward generally earned lower incomes.
     The report also questions the notion that teaching
people specific skills is better than teaching them general
ones. Allen found that even among garduates of technical and
vocational programs, few use the skills they learned in
school on the job.
     "This is not an indictment of academic university
programs that never claimed to teach skills tailored to
particular jobs," Allen said, "but it is a serious challenge
to technical adnd vocational programs whose sole rationale
is providing employment related training."
     As well, arts programs are far more effective for
teaching broader employment skills such as writing and
speaking, he said.
     Training for What? also claimed that arts and science
graduates cannot find jobs, so they re-enter the education
system seeking technical training.
     Allen said that while it is true that about five per
cent of students in technical and vocational programs
already have university degrees, the reverse is also true.
Nearly eight per cent of university students have previously
earned technical and vocational diplomas.
     "Many students take more than one program because they
are searching for what is right for them. The fact that
university graduates enrol at BCIT is no more reason to
shrink UBC than is the converse a reason to shrink BCIT,"
Allen said.