You may have seen that late last week, the Business Higher Education Roundtable (BHER) rounded up a number of big names from colleges, universities and businesses to sign a letter to Finance Bill Morneau calling for the development of a National Work-Integrated Learning (WIL) Strategy as part of the 2019 Budget. What should we make of this?
On the one hand, it is certainly a sign that lots of people are taking WIL seriously. And that’s a good thing. Canada is already arguably a world-leader in incorporating work experiences into its tertiary education programs, mainly through the widespread adoption of co-op programs. Finding ways to increase the number of students who can integrate the skills they learn during their studies with real-world experience is a laudable goal. So, it’s promising that educational institutions and the business community are finding common cause around this initiative.
On the other hand: asking the federal government for…a national strategy? Oy.
First, the Government of Canada should be nowhere near the WIL file and I am fairly sure the Privy Council Office will back me up on that. If WIL is meant to be an integrated part of students’ education and not some fancy but unwieldly, tacked-on bauble, it is about curriculum. Now, the feds can get away with a lot of nibbling around the edges of section 93 of the constitution. It can give loans and grants to students because it has an unlimited right to give money to citizens for whatever reasons it wants, and it can fund research because it’s about economic development. But getting involved in something designed to alter curricula across the country? At the margins, it can do it to the extent that the curricula involved are graduate program curricula and it can claim that the intervention is “really” about research – that’s basically how MITACS gets funded. But there’s a reason the federal government has never got involved in financially supporting co-op programs before, and that reason is Section 93.
Second, even if getting the feds involved was an option – why in God’s name would you want their contribution to be the creation of a “national strategy”? The development of national strategies, in Ottawa, are at least as often a substitute for action as they are a prelude to it. Especially if the policy area in question is mostly in an area of provincial jurisdiction, because if you ask the feds to draw up a strategy, they will almost certainly want to lead it, and that’s just asking for trouble. Ottawa – and Employment and Skills Development Canada in particular – can’t even consult properly with provincial governments, let alone lead them in anything. Asking the feds to develop a strategy for you is just making your own agenda subsumed to their interests.
This is about where I start to get worried/skeptical about WIL. I don’t think most universities actually want WIL to be about curriculum. I see a lot of universities talking about WIL. I see them setting up conferences so they can talk amongst themselves about it (though I note that students – the alleged beneficiaries of these programs – tend not to get invited to these affairs). I don’t see them taking many new steps to really think deeply about how WIL integrates into the curriculum. Sure, in some fields (like Engineering) they don’t need to do that because it’s already been thought through. But Humanities? Fine Arts? Science? What I see is a lot of universities attempting to re-classify stuff they already do as WIL and in some cases making attempts to add some short-term internships to their roster of student services. But I see almost nothing of scale which genuinely attempts to integrate these learning experiences into curriculum because that would require institutions to have curriculum in these areas (as opposed to a bunch of buckets which students must fill up with credits).
Here’s the point: the University of Toronto, one of the signatories of the letter to Morneau, is a $2 billion a year enterprise and raises 70% of its own money. If the University of Toronto wanted to make WIL a priority, it could do so in a heartbeat. It does not need to wait for Bill Morneau or anyone in Ottawa to make it so. Same with UBC. Same with any of the signatories of that BHER letter. If they want to convince people they are serious about WIL and not just go through the motions for a year or two to placate politicians who are temporarily hot for the idea because it’s the “new thing”, they need to do a lot more than write a letter. Writing a letter is easy and cheap. Actually going out and creating change on the ground is hard. If the PSE and business community want to be taken seriously, why not put their own money behind it? Why not develop their own strategic plan, and invite the feds to either get on board (PCO permitting) or get the hell out of the way.
So, praise to BHER for keeping everyone at the table and advancing an educational reform agenda which is very much to the good. But federal “action” (and I use the term loosely) is no substitute for key stakeholders just getting on with the job on their own.
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On behalf of Co-operative Education and Work-Integrated Learning (CEWIL) Canada, a professional association representing over 95 colleges, polytechnics, and universities across the country, I wanted to take a few a minutes to share a little more information on some of the good work already underway at the national level as well as to provide some additional historical information on WIL in Canada.
You are correct in saying that Canada is already a world leader in WIL, particularly with respect to co-operative education programs. What you might not be aware of is that Canada’s leadership in this field is due, in large part, to the creation of a national definition for co-op programs and an accreditation program established by CEWIL (formerly the Canadian Association for Co-operative Education) in 1979. While not all post-secondary institutions offering co-op programs are accredited, the national definition for co-op programs has been incredibly powerful in creating quality standards for co-op education across Canada for the last forty years. Most schools offering co-op programs strive towards these standards, even if they are not interested in pursuing accreditation. Of particular note is the accreditation requirement that students be remunerated for their work – regardless of the current economic climate or the student’s discipline. This criterion has been paramount in establishing a culture in our country that co-op students be paid for their work. This is not the case in many other countries where paid student employment is limited to a few disciplines (namely Engineering and some Business students) or where unpaid co-op opportunities increase during times of economic downturn.
Contrary to your statement that the federal government has never played a role in financially supporting co-op programs, we wanted to note that there is historic precedent of federal funding for co-op although most of this support was provided in the 80s and 90s. One such program in 1984 provided federal funding in amount of $4 million to assist secondary and post-secondary institutions in starting new co-op programs and expanding existing ones. At that same time, an additional $300,000 was allocated to CEWIL support the association’s efforts in establishing quality co-operative education programming. While these funds are clearly a drop in the federal budget bucket, they were instrumental in supporting the growth of co-op programs in Canada. Further, they demonstrate the important role that the federal government can and should play in supporting national work-integrated learning goals in Canada.
In recent years, CEWIL Canada and its members have continued to work across the provincial/federal jurisdictional divide, establishing a national statistics database on co-op work terms, sharing best practices for work-integrated learning among practitioners located across the country, and contributing to research in this field at the regional, provincial, national and international levels. Most recently, CEWIL hosted two national events, bringing together representatives from the federal government, provincial ministries of advanced education, major funding agencies such as Mitacs, NSERC, SSHRC, industry leaders and WIL practitioners to discuss national data WIL collection, establishing mutually beneficial relationships between industry and post-secondary institutions, and developing a national WIL strategy.
Among the many potential benefits of a national strategy are an increase in the number of quality WIL experiences, technological solutions to distribute job postings to institutions across the country, and better data on WIL experiences at the national level. While we agree that a national WIL strategy isn’t something that the federal government should lead – they can certainly play a role in dedicating funds to support this work. As we experienced in the 80s, even relatively small sums of money dedicated to these efforts can make a significant impact on Canada’s ability to set standards and create quality work-integrated learning experiences for our students. As educators in the Canadian post-secondary system, we are well aware of section 93 of the constitution but we contend that it can’t be held as an insurmountable barrier against coming together as a nation with respect to work-integrated learning. CEWIL has been effectively working as a pan-Canadian association for 45 years now and we continue to strive towards national standards and national solutions. Let’s continue to innovate – with the right kind of support from the federal government – to do better for all students in Canada.
Anne-Marie Fannon
Past-President, Co-operative Education and Work-Integrated Learning Canada