| OTTAWA
| Oct.
17, 2008 — As
the economy slows down, experts predict interest in post-secondary education
will soar upwards.
Continuing one's studies or going back to school is often thought of
as the safe and "sensible" thing to do when we enter a recession,
says economist Simon Power.
 |
| A Carleton University student searches for textbooks.
Experts predict more young people will apply to post-secondary institutions
as the economy slows down. |
At the height of Alberta's oil boom, "people sort of left high
school before they graduated because they were able to find jobs that
paid well," says
the Carleton University professor. "A
lot of those kids are going to be laid off and hopefully will go back
to school."
David Johnston, the associate vice-provost at the University of Calgary,
agrees.
While it's too early to know how many students will apply for
fall 2009, he expects the numbers to be higher compared to enrolment
this year.
"In the past five years, the employment market has been good for
people coming out of high school," he says.
But because of dropping oil prices, Johnston says he expects more applications
for the next academic school year.
Johnston says the university will try to accommodate more students,
but space in many of its degree programs is limited.
Simply not enough space
Demand for spots in universities may go up, but that doesn't necessarily
mean that enrolment will increase too, says Herb O'Heron, senior advisor
for national affairs at the Association of Universities and Colleges
of Canada.
 |
| With a predicted increased demand for post-secondary
education, some universities may not have enough room to accommodate
more students. |
"It has an impact on the demand," he says, but not on how
many spots universities can supply.
"It's who gets in and not how many get in," he explains.
Universities need to have the room and the money to accommodate more
students, he says, and since most of a university's funds come from the
government, increased enrolment depends on how much support provincial
and federal governments are willing to provide.
In the past, he says, universitites have responded by increasing enrolment,
with or without extra government funding.
When the Canadian economy was stagnant during the early 1980s, enrolment
increased dramatically, he says.
From 1980 to 1983, the number of full-time Canadian students increased
by almost 20 per cent, and then evened out, growing by about five per
cent between 1983 and 1986.
Enrolment in universities jumped by about 17 per cent between 1987
and 1992, when the economy started to decline again.
A safe haven in graduate school
O'Heron says a large part of increased enrolment is due to students
deciding to stay in school.
| 'You can sit at home
watching soap operas all day and twiddle your thumbs or you can go
to grad school and increase your intellectual capital' |
Ian Lee, a business professor at Carleton University, agrees. He says
universities can only take on some additional students in times of heightened
demand.
He says that some general degrees in the arts, humanities and social
sciences "can just make first year classes bigger," but, for
the most part, post-secondary institutions can't take on too many new
students.
But Lee doesn't expect increased interest from students coming out
of high school in troubled economic times. Instead, he says
that more university students will consider applying to graduate school.
This is because university grads often find it hard to get a job during
a market downturn, he says, and so they turn to graduate school to keep
them occupied until the job market improves.
His advice to graduating students worried about finding a job is to
further their education.
"You can sit at home watching soap operas all day and twiddle your
thumbs or you can go to grad school and increase your intellectual capital," he
says.
O'Heron says with any kind of an increased interest in post-secondary
education, governments should be investing more in education during a
recession.
"(In a recession,) they look a little longer term...one of the
things they can do is invest in human capital," he says. "Whether
they will or not is another question." 
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