From Charlie Smith’s article in the Georgia Straight, May 28, 2016:
“Today, over 95,000 B.C. residents are not employed because they have not obtained a level of education adequate to meet current employers’ needs.’ And while some of this educational shortfall is in trades and applied skills, the largest gap, it turns out, is in bachelor- and graduate-level education.”
Part of the reason is that 57 percent of B.C. employers require applicants to have university degrees.
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Petter told the Vancouver Board of Trade there needs to be a “greater appreciation for the role of human capital in advancing our position in the world economy”.
“Instead of calling upon universities and colleges merely to respond to predetermined labour market demands, we need to empower our institutions to develop our labour markets and to drive our economic future,” the SFU president said. “While our competitors in Europe and Asia invest in education as a primary feature of their economic strategies, we look to our natural resources and appear to regard education—pardon the pun—as secondary.”
Read the full article here.
SFU president Andrew Petter says education must be seen as a core component of B.C.’s economic strategy
By Charlie Smith, Georgia Straight, May 28, 2016
Adult Basic Education is a Basic Right 