The big lie: public policy and the diminishing value of post-secondary education in Ontario's economy

Last week I addressed the crisis in the legal and education sectors related to young people seeking to enter these professions and the shifting value of their professional degrees. Later today Premier Dalton McGuinty will announce that three new undergraduate university campuses will be created in Brampton, Barrie, and Milton if the Liberal are reelected. Education has been a key area of public policy under the provincial Liberals, but beneath the partisan optics  a number of unsettling questions exist that need to be probed surrounding the diminishing value of a post-secondary degree in the Ontario economy. This post explores the linkages between politics, the post-secondary education sector, and changes to the labour market as more dialogue is needed  given the changing nature of the economy, the impact from globalization, creeping credentialism, rising income inequality, and the tuition costs being downloaded onto students and their families. 

Since World War II post-secondary education participation rates have skyrocketed in Canada and over the past two degrees there has been an explicit policy push in Ontario spearheaded by the Ministry of Training, Colleges, and Universities to get more young people to enroll in post-secondary education programs. While this is a laudable goal, as a stand alone policy it fails to address deeper structural issues within the labour market such as the rise of precarious work, the decline of the standard employment relationship, and the hollowing out of the middle class with good jobs steadily disappearing. Earlier this year Paul Krugman stated that "What we can't do is get where we need to go just by giving workers college degrees, which may be no more tickets to jobs that don't exist or don't pay middle-class wages." Krugman nails it by zeroing in on problematic nature of public policy that throws every young person in sight into a classroom amid wider  policy gaps that have failed to maintain: the bargaining power of workers, a stable social safety net, or appropriate regulatory oversight over corporate excess.

The solutions that exist for long-term sustainable prosperity don't lie within the canon of neoliberal orthodoxy and as recent events have shown youth around the globe are acutely aware of the bill of goods that has been shoved down their throats. Although it might be futile in the short-term we need to begin asking what are the longer term strategies and policy solutions for building shared wealth such as updating workplace laws to respond to the changing economy, adequately supporting young people in the transition from school-to-work, and properly equipping organized labour with the means to represent workers in all sectors of the economy. These are serious issues that don't get addressed often by the mainstream media or politicians as there rooted in complex ideas that don't neatly dovetail into a simplistic worldview that can be boiled down into a sound bite.

Going forward people should question the ideas behind the policy solutions being presented to them. The post-secondary education strategy being advanced by the Liberals is one that needs to be critically examined because education by itself isn't the key for the future prosperity of Ontario. We need better policy solutions to the economic problems that we currently face, not the status quo that slowly eroding our prosperity. So on this Labour Day I encourage everyone to dig deeper and get serious about thinking about big ideas that will help us secure our futures.