Yesterday, we talked about polling and the framing of election issues in general.  Today, I want to talk specifically about post-secondary education polling. 

Though post-secondary education does not register as a “major issue” in any of the pre-election polls, the Canadian Association of University Teachers (CAUT) nonetheless commissioned its own polling on post-secondary education (through Abacus), presumably the better to convince politicians that Canadians really do care about the issue.  The results (here, split across two documents) are…interesting, though possibly not for reasons CAUT would want.

There’s all the usual stuff about how everyone agrees post-secondary education is great, they’d love all profs to be full-time and tuition to be cheaper (interestingly, “free” is less popular than “cheaper”), and they’d totally be in favour of new taxes on other people in order to pay for everything (seriously – the survey offered a binary choice between “let universities/colleges raise fees” and “raise taxes on the wealthiest Canadians and big business” to pay for higher education, with no other alternatives).  None of this is new, nor is it particularly meaningful without asking what individual voters would sacrifice for these sometimes costly services.  

No, the interesting stuff was when the conversation got away from dollars and cents and into views on higher education itself.  For instance, when Abacus asked a question about the purpose of higher education, Canadians split 53-47 in favour of “it’s about the skills for good jobs” over “it’s about encouraging students to think outside the box and create positive change,” with younger Canadians tilting slightly more  the “jobs” definition than their elders (the answer, of course, is that it’s both and it’s faintly silly to ask people to choose, but ask a reductive question, you’ll get a reductive answer).

Or there was the question about how PSE can help solve problems.  60% thought it helps a lot in terms of helping students get the skills they need for the modern economy, but only 37% thought it was contributing to the health of local communities. This is quite a fascinating gap:  people think that universities help “people” and “economies” but not “communities” (I think there’s actually something really important in that gap that universities need to pay attention to, but I will return to that topic another day).

Now, to the most important bit: the questionnaire offered five choices with respect to possible policy priorities and asked respondents to rank them.  I’m not entirely sure how they came up with these five (they aren’t the ones I would have chosen), but that’s their choice.  This is a much better survey technique than just asking agree/disagree questions because it forces the respondent to make choices.  Anyway, here is the result:

“Lowering fees” was the overwhelming choice as a policy priority.  Not spending more on science and not hiring more full-time faculty (I assume this was CAUT’s shorthand for “improving teaching,” which it clearly is not, but whatevs) had roughly similar numbers of first and second-place votes.  Definitely not spending on laboratories, which is every federal government’s favourite go-to economic stimulus package.  And wow, do Canadians not like the idea of spending more money on study abroad.  It’s not that they don’t like the idea of universities and colleges giving students experiences – on another question, respondents were even more positive about the idea of institutions working with businesses and NGOs to give students work experience while studying than they were about ensuring access regardless of financial circumstance – but getting that experience abroad?  That just looks like an extravagance.  (I’m sure the Liberals will be pleased as punch to find out that the study abroad policy that Universities Canada ultra-nagged them into including in the last budget is about as popular as season 2 of True Detective).

The bottom line here is: Canadians think higher education is worth other people’s money, but not their own, and if there is any spare money, it should go to making higher education cheaper, not better.  A very concerted long-term effort will be needed to turn this thinking around.