POLICY PAPER Student Employment Spring 2016
Prepared by: Stéphane Hamade, Vice President Education Federation of Students, University of Waterloo Lindsee Perkins, Vice President External University Students’ Council, Western University Ehima Osazuwa, President McMaster Students Union, McMaster University Doug Turner Federation of Students, University of Waterloo David Zhang, Provincial & Federal Coordinator University Students’ Council, Western University Giuliana Guarna, Vice President Administration McMaster Students Union, McMaster University Danielle Pierre, Research Analyst Ontario Undergraduate Student Alliance With files from: Alex Hobbs, Policy & Research Coordinator Brock University Students’ Union, Brock University Fiona Purkiss Brock University Students’ Union, Brock University
ABOUT OUSA OUSA represents the interests of over 140,000 professional and undergraduate, full-time and part-time university students at seven student associations across Ontario. Our vision is for an accessible, affordable, accountable, and high quality post-secondary education in Ontario. To achieve this vision we’ve come together to develop solutions to challenges facing higher education, build broad consensus for our policy options, and lobby government to implement them.
This OUSA Student Employment Policy Paper by the Ontario Undergraduate Student Alliance is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
Suggested citation: Hamade, Stéphane, Lindsee Perkins, Ehima Osazuwa, Doug Turner, David Zhang, Giuliana Guarna, and Danielle Pierre. Policy Paper: Student Employment. (Toronto: Ontario Undergraduate Student Alliance, 2016).
TABLE OF CONTENTS EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
1
INTRODUCTION
5
UNIVERSITY STUDENT EMPLOYMENT LANDSCAPE
6
LOWERING YOUTH UNEMPLOYMENT DISPELLING THE CAREER MYTH
6 8
INFORMATION AND PROGRAMMING
12
IMPROVING SKILL ARTICULATION COLLECTING AND DISSEMINATING DATA OPTIMIZING CAREER SERVICES
12 13 15
IN-STUDY EMPLOYMENT
18
ACCUMULATING JOB EXPERIENCE AND BUILDING NETWORKS ACHIEVING EMPLOYMENT EQUITY
18 19
EXPERIENTIAL LEARNING
22
INCREASING ACCESS EXPANDING CO-OP AND INTERNSHIP OPPORTUNITIES AMENDING THE EMPLOYMENT STANDARDS ACT ELIMINATING UNPAID INTERNSHIPS
22 24 29 30
EMPLOYER TRAINING
33
INCREASING ON-THE-JOB TRAINING AND HIRING THROUGH WAGE SUBSIDIES AND GRANTS33 ENTREPRENEURSHIP
35
ENCOURAGING STUDENT ENTREPRENEURSHIP MAXIMIZING ECONOMIC BENEFITS OF ENTREPRENEURSHIP MONITORING PUBLIC-PRIVATE PARTNERSHIPS
35 38 39
POLICY STATEMENT
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EXECUTIVE SUMMARY Students’ understanding and participation in “work” affects their university experience in many ways. Employment can serve as both a motivator and hindrance to academic success: it can teach valuable lessons while also detracting from academic work. It is also the number one reason why students attend post-secondary school. Unfortunately, numerous economic, sociocultural, and structural barriers stand in the way of increasing the employment rates of highly educated youth. These barriers must be treated as distinct yet interconnected, and necessitate multifaceted approaches. This OUSA policy paper outlines how government, employers, educators, and students can work together to overcome barriers and move towards a more prosperous, productive future.
THE PROBLEMS Difficult Paths to Employment Unemployment rates remain erratic and above the national average for highly educated youth, sitting at 8.7 percent in 2015. At the same time, by 2036, 23.1 percent of the population is expected to be 65 years or older. Attrition rates are low because of an aging population and poor economic climate, limiting the employment and training opportunities for new entrants to the labour market. The transition from school to work is becoming increasingly difficult for Ontario’s youth. Still, they are not provided with realistic information about their educational and career paths. Students are expected to take a linear path from secondary school, through postsecondary education, to their chosen career-track job—an expectation known as the “career myth.” Little room is left for them to develop personal and professional identities or explore a wide breadth of disciplinary opportunities that would help them excel in uncertain economic times. Dissociated Learning Outcomes The separation of in-class learning outcomes and skill development makes it difficult for students to describe their proficiencies to employers. Outside of the classroom, students are not provided with adequate information on employment opportunities and they are expected to access and fund career-related resources independently. Government and employers do not share the same understanding of labour market needs and trends, which makes it all the more difficult to convey this information to students and recent graduates. Limited Experience Employers look for related job experience in entry-level hires. Unfortunately, academic demands make it difficult for students to engaging in meaningful employment while studying. As a result, a limited number of students work in positions related to their field of study while attending university. The discrimination experienced by marginalized populations can make it especially difficult for some students to find jobs. Unsatisfactory Conditions There is a higher demand for co-op opportunities than there are jobs and placements available. This means many students do not have access to high-quality opportunities—particularly those in the Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences. This puts young workers in desperate and vulnerable situations. The Employment Standards Act (ESA) does not cover individuals participating in
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work-experience programs for school. Students are also disproportionately involved in unpaid work. Students worry that employers are able to exploit young workers with limited consequences. Little On-the-job Training Recent graduates do not always have the technical skills that employers expect them to, yet employers do not provide their employees with substantial on-the-job training. Government subsidies have worked in the past to increase training. However, not all incentives are advantageous for all business sizes. Low Entrepreneurial Involvement Not enough students have the opportunity or resources to explore entrepreneurship during their university career. Although the government acknowledges the need to innovate, Ontario has demonstrated persistently weak performance and economic growth in this regard. When students are able to participate in entrepreneurial initiatives, their intellectual property is not always adequately protected.
RECOMMENDATIONS Improve Transitions Highly educated students are critical to the success of Ontario’s workforce and the government must work to decrease their unemployment rates. To do this, the provincial government should: • Set a target to reach full employment among new graduates, • Define different contributors’ roles in the Youth Employment Strategy, and • Initiate a cross-sector review of existing youth employment programs and release the results. All students should have access to a wide breadth of learning opportunities that encourage them to explore multiple career and learning paths. The post-secondary sector could work to dispel the career myth by: • Ensuring students are exposed to realistic messages about their employment outcomes, • Adapting secondary school curriculum to include thorough career and guidance counselling, • Providing students with job shadowing and mentorship opportunities, and • Requiring students to take classes outside of their major. Compile Information & Expand Programming All undergraduate students should have access to resources that increase their understanding of how and where to get a job. Students should be encouraged to develop and attain skills that provide personal fulfillment and satisfaction, while also being taught to describe the broader value of these skills. Career services should play a key role in developing students’ employability. Universities could improve students’ employment outcomes if they: • Presented and articulated learning outcomes in course outlines, • Ensured transferable and technical skills are associated with learning outcomes, • Made all students aware of career services upon enrolment, and • Designated additional funding to career services.
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Students need reliable and easy to access labour market information. The provincial government should work with universities and employers to: • Understand emerging labour market trends and convey this information to students, • Provide detailed and nuanced data on graduate employment outcomes, and • Provide envelope funding for career services at universities. Increase In-Study Employment All students should have equal access to, and equally benefit from, in-study employment opportunities in their field of study. The provincial government should: • Provide wage subsidies to employers who hire students part-time, • Facilitate relationships between the private sector and universities to match students to relevant employment opportunities, • Invest in and incentivize programs targeted at those with higher rates of unemployment, and • Legislate that employers decouple names from applications. Expand Experiential Learning All willing and qualified students should be able to benefit from experiential learning opportunities while they attend university. Diverse forms of experiential learning should be made available to compliment various disciplines and meet student demand. Any experiences should be of high enough quality to increase students’ employment prospects. The provincial government could support universities in these endeavours by: • Providing financial incentives to universities to ensure experiential learning is available to all students, • Encouraging the development of alternatives to co-op programs, • Creating grants that incentivize employers to hire co-op students and interns, and • Working with interested universities to expand their co-op and internship programs in fields with low participation rates. Students who engage in work experience programs should have the same protections as other Ontario workers. It is unfair to expect students to work without pay or ESA protection in order to meet degree requirements. The province could better protect students at work by: • Amending the ESA to include students engaged in work experience programs; • Using employment blitzes to enforce ESA compliance and prevent abuses; • Banning employers, universities, and accreditation bodies from requiring or supporting unpaid internships; and • Developing a grant program to help low-earning businesses pay their interns. Encourage Employer Training Employers are in the best position to provide technical training. They should be incentivized to reclaim their responsibility to train employees using a wide variety of incentives. The province should: • Reallocate current youth-employment-related tax credits for small and medium sized businesses towards upfront grants and wage subsidies, and • Create wage subsidies and grants to enable not-for-profit businesses to hire recent graduates.
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Stimulate Entrepreneurship Entrepreneurial initiatives provide students with transferable skills that they would not otherwise receive in the classroom and is a key component in increasing Ontario’s economic growth, prosperity, and productivity. All willing and qualified students should have the opportunity to participate. Entrepreneurship could be introduced to more students if the provincial government: • Created new initiatives to support students, • Encouraged universities to recognize the role of entrepreneurship in innovative postsecondary environments, • Prioritized increasing entrepreneurial activity at universities, • Conducted research on new and existing programs, • Regulated intellectual property management standards to protect student researchers and incubator residents, and • Created invectives for universities to build relationships with employers intended to increate entrepreneurial activity.
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INTRODUCTION The issue of student employment is complex, as students’ understanding and participation in “work” affects their university experience in multiple ways. Employment can serve as both a motivator and hindrance to academic success: it can teach valuable lessons while also detracting from other (perhaps intangible) benefits of education. It also stands as the most desirable outcome of broad, theory-based training. Employment and professional development have been integrated into classroom activities and the relationship between intellectual training and human capital training is becoming increasingly interdependent. While increasing the employment rates of highly educated youth is inherently a good thing, numerous economic, sociocultural, and structural barriers stand in the way. These barriers must be treated as distinct yet interconnected, and necessitate multipronged approaches. Government, employers, educators, and students all need to work together to identify and overcome these barriers to ultimately move towards a more prosperous and productive future. This policy paper begins by outlining undergraduate students’ perspective on the current youth employment landscape. Concerns surrounding increasing youth unemployment rates are discussed alongside the factors that are keeping students out of the labour market. Among misinformation regarding postsecondary pathways, employer expectations, and the ‘right’ path to employment, students feel they are being misled and ask that the government take the lead in addressing the barriers they are facing in their transitions between school and the workforce. Subsequent sections of this policy paper discuss the initiatives, programs, and information that students would like more of. Be that skill and learning outcome articulation, labour market information, on-campus support services, or in-study employment opportunities, students feel that the government should be making targeted investments and facilitating relationship building between universities and employers. It is also the place of the government to provide all stakeholders—students, universities, and employers—with the information, data, and research they need to make evidence-based decisions. Better quality data and evaluation of employment initiatives will also enable all players to implement new programs to help graduates gain meaningful employment and make positive contributions to Ontario’s economy. The following principles, concerns, and recommendations have been compiled by students, for students and represent their interpretation of the best ways to improve their long term employment outcomes and economic success.
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UNIVERSITY STUDENT EMPLOYMENT LANDSCAPE LOWERING YOUTH UNEMPLOYMENT Principle: Highly educated students are critical to the success of Ontario’s workforce. Principle: Students should be able to find work once they have finished their degree. Concern: The youth unemployment rate continues to rise for those who have just graduated. Concern: People are retiring later, which limits the employment and training of new talent. Recommendation: The Ontario government should set a target to reach full employment for new graduates. Recommendation: The Ontario government needs to better define different contributors’ roles in the Youth Employment Strategy. Recommendation: The government should initiate a cross sector consultation review of existing youth employment programs to identify gaps and inefficacies. Recommendation: The government should publicly release data on the outcomes of these programs. As each year passes, more students are willing and ready to take on employment within Ontario. Putting these new graduates to work would greatly benefit the province, but a few things stand in the way of prioritizing these young workers. In 2015, Ontario’s population of people 65 years and older was 16 percent; by 2036, research estimates this number to increase to 23.1 percent.1 As the population ages, more workers are retiring later in life which decreases the amount of jobs available for new labour market entrants. In turn this limits employment and training opportunities for new talent. The province needs to be setting up the next generation for longterm success and that means getting new graduates to work so they can make productive contributions to the economy and society. Students should be able to find meaningful work once they have finished their postsecondary studies. While we understand not every student wants to find a job after graduation, it is the number one reason why students attend post-secondary education in the first place.2 So long as the government expects graduating students to contribute to the economy, the government must take steps to ensure the labour market can absorb the number of students seeking employment. Youth unemployment is on the rise, meaning more and more students are struggling to find work once they have graduated. There is limited research surrounding the unemployment rate of those who have just graduated from a post-secondary institution, but OUSA believes filtering bachelor’s degree holders using the 15 to 24 year old age bracket in Statistics Canada data gives a strong enough representation of our students. Illustrated in Figure 1 below, in 2013, the unemployment
1 Statistics Canada, “Table 051-0001 Estimates of population, by age group and sex for July 1, Canada, provinces and territories,” Government of Canada CANSIM Database, last modified September 28, 2015, accessed March 3, 2016. Employment and Social Development Canada, “Canadians in Context - Aging Population,” Government of Canada, accessed February 16, 2016, http://well-being.esdc.gc.ca/misme-iowb/
[email protected]?iid=33#foottext_1. 2 Prairie Research Associates, 2013 First-Year University Student Survey: Master Report (Ottawa: Canadian University Survey Consortium, 2013), 30.
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rate for 15 to 24 year olds with a bachelor’s degree was 10 percent in Ontario.3 By 2014, this number had grown to 11.7 percent, but in 2015 decreased to 8.7%.4 Figure 1: Longitudinal unemployment rates for bachelor's degree holders in Ontario and Canada, 2005-2015.
Unemployment Rate
14.0% 12.0% 10.0% 8.0% 6.0%
Canada
4.0%
Ontario
2.0% 0.0%
Year
These rates are both erratic and well above generally accepted rates of unemployment when the economy is at full employment. At full employment, unemployment rates should be as low as possible for the economy to continue to grow while all production resources—including human capital—are used as efficiently as possible.5 As long as the youth unemployment rate for bachelor’s degree holders continues to rise the province will be failing to use its human capital as efficiently as possible and new graduates will continue to struggle. While OUSA credits the work the province has done to create jobs with the Youth Jobs Strategy, more work needs to be done to ensure students are able to find meaningful employment within Ontario. To combat this problem, OUSA recommends the Ontario government set a target of full employment for graduates to substantially decrease the youth unemployment rate. Previously, the government has set targets for other related topics, making it easy for people to understand the goal and process behind each initiative. For example, in the 2015 provincial budget, the Ontario government discussed how its investment in post-secondary education since 2002 has helped to increase the number of students enrolling in post-secondary education. This initiative was put in place to achieve or exceed their goal of 70 percent postsecondary attainment by 2020.6 By initially setting this goal, the government was held accountable to its people, forcing them to find ways to achieve this goal. Similarly, we believe the government needs to set this target to bring the youth
3 Statistics Canada, “Table 282-0209 Labour force survey estimates (LFS), by educational degree, sex and age group,” Government of Canada CANSIM Database, last modified January 7, 2016. 4 Ibid. 5 Conference Board of Canada, “How Canada Performs: International Rank, Unemployment Rate,” The Conference Board of Canada, last modified 2016, accessed February 24, 2016, http://www.conferenceboard.ca/hcp/details/economy/unemployement-rate.aspx. 6 Charles Sousa, Building Ontario Up: Ontario Budget 2015 (Toronto: Queen’s Printer for Ontario, 2015).
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population—particularly those who are highly educated—to full employment so the people of Ontario can ensure this is a priority moving forward.7 The government has recently implemented the Youth Employment Strategy, which is comprised of three program streams: Skills Link, Career Focus, and Summer Work Experience. All of the programs provide funding to employers to help youth develop skills and make informed decisions about the labour market.8 Understanding that this strategy was developed to help youth develop and learn skills, OUSA would like to see each contributor’s role outlined to better reflect their influence on the strategy’s goals. For example, the Conference Board of Canada released a report in 2013 discussing the skills gap in Ontario, which outlined how recommendations for each party involved could ensure the program’s success. While there are many recommendations, a few that were of particular interest to OUSA said: 1)
Employers: “To ensure that they are benefiting as much as possible from the capacities and potential of current employees, employers should increase investments in employee training and development;” 9
2) Educators: “To ensure that students have skills that will help them contribute to organizational success and their own well-being, post-secondary institutions should assess and make adjustments to programs and curricula to better reflect the current and future realities of the labour market and economy;”10 and 3) Government: “To support planning and decision-making by educators, students, and businesses, federal and provincial governments should collect and share richer and more accurate labour market information.”11 By laying out recommendations as such, it is easy to understand how each party contributes to decreasing youth and student unemployment rates in the province. To ensure all the employment programs are benefitting students, OUSA recommends the Ontario government conduct a cross sector consultation to identify gaps and inefficacies within the programs. This information is important to understand how the province needs to move forward and ultimately improve the employment rate for graduates. Also, the provincial government should publicly release this data for the purpose of accountability and policy making.
DISPELLING THE CAREER MYTH Principle: All students should be given the choice to explore multiple career and learning paths throughout their education. Principle: All qualified students should have access to a wide breadth of learning opportunities.
7 We recognize that an unemployment rate of zero is unrealistic and unattainable and there will always be a small proportion of individuals who are frictionally employed (transitioning between positions in the labour market). However, the government must aim to bring the youth unemployment rate down to ensure that all young people who want to be employed are able to find gainful work opportunities. 8 Service Canada, “Youth Employment Strategy,” Government of Canada, last modified March 11, 2014, http://www.servicecanada.gc.ca/eng/epb/yi/yep/newprog/yesprograms.shtml. 9 James Stuckey and Daniel Munro, The Need to Make Skills Work: The Cost of Ontario’s Skills Gap (Ottawa: The Conference Board of Canada, 2013). 10 Ibid. 11 Ibid.
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Concern: Secondary students are not being provided with realistic information about their educational and career paths. Concern: Students are expected to know what they want to do after graduation as soon as they enter post secondary education. Concern: Students are not given the opportunity to participate in a wide enough breadth of learning opportunities. Concern: Students are often expected to select a specific career path, as opposed to developing personal and professional identities that will assist them in finding meaningful and gainful employment. Recommendation: The Ontario government should ensure that students are exposed to realistic messages about their post-graduate employment outcomes, before they accept their offer. Recommendation: The Ministry of Education should adapt the high school curriculum to include career and guidance counselling that helps to dispel the career myth. Recommendation: Universities and the province should provide students with more job shadowing and career related mentorship opportunities. Recommendation: Universities should provide students with more opportunities to take classes outside of their major that will go towards their degree requirements. OUSA believes that universities and the government have a responsibility to give students realistic expectations of the employment opportunities a university degree offers. A 2013 report by the Globe and Mail found students perceive that they are being sold a “false dream” and that “[they]’ve been told that there is going to be a great career for [them] at the end of a lot of hard work and then there is nothing.”12 “A gap has emerged between young people’s expectations for their future (as cultivated by social norms, parents, and even some guidance counsellors) and the realities of the labour market.”13 The idea that students will enter post-secondary education, receive a bachelor’s degree, and enter a pre-determined career is an antiquated thought process that continues to perpetuate the “career myth.” The career myth is the notion that students will have a defined educational plan that they will stick to, that will enable them to proceed in a linear fashion from education, to career, and then to retirement.14 In contrast, most young people are more likely to undergo a “milling and churning” experience, where they may stop and start their education, switch programs, and even institutions, in order to find the pathway that is the best fit.15 This process is exaggerated by the fact that a number of students enter post secondary education with either little or no idea of what they truly want to study, and therefore use education as a means to discover their interests until they find what best fits their abilities and passions.16 In order to better equip students for success in their post secondary education, institutions and the province need to provide more opportunities for students to explore alternative educational and career paths. Youth transition studies have shown that most young people develop their identity through trial and error in work and extracurricular activities.17 This identity formation happens through emerging adulthood, which is typically understood as occurring between the 12 Erin Millar, “The expectation gap: Students’ and universities’ roles in preparing for life after grad,” The Globe and Mail, October 21, 2014, http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/education/the-expectation-gap-students-anduniversities-roles-in-preparing-for-life-after-grad/article21187004/. 13 Ibid. 14 Cathy Campbell and Peggy Dutton, Career Crafting the Decade after High School: Professional's Guide (Toronto: Canadian Education and Research Institute for Counselling, 2015). 15 Ibid. 16 Ibid. 17 Ibid.
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ages of 18 and 25.18 As such, the inability to follow the path that is upheld through the career myth, may lead to an identity crisis for many students as they are developing their professional and personal identities simultaneously.19 Students may be more able to find gainful employment if they are afforded the opportunities to explore and develop their personal identities throughout their educational experience which typically coincides with the critical formative years of emerging adulthood. Furthermore, the research suggests that instead of following a linear pathway, career decisions are more likely to occur in incremental stages. In this incremental model, career commitments are more likely to be made in the framework of short-term planning as opposed to long-term career visions.20 The long-term approach is well suited to specific occupational locations, such as doctor, lawyer, or engineer—jobs that will not be obtained by the vast majority of students who enter post-secondary education.21 In recognition of this, the province and universities should facilitate opportunities for students to have a more dynamic combination of training, studying, and employment. Prior to accepting their offers and beginning their post-secondary education, students need to be provided with information that helps them understand the career myth and their employment outcomes. Currently, all grade 10 students in Ontario take a Career Studies course, which aims to do the following: “This course teaches students how to develop and achieve personal goals for future learning, work, and community involvement. Students will assess their interests, skills, and characteristics and investigate current economic and workplace trends, work opportunities, and ways to search for work. The course explores postsecondary learning and career options, prepares students for managing work and life transitions, and helps students focus on their goals through the development of a career plan.”22 The Ministry of Education should adapt the grade 10 Career Studies course to address the idea of the career myth and provide realistic messages and information about potential employment outcomes. In addition, students can be presented with more realistic information about their employment outcomes and potential career trajectory via guidance and career counsellors who are equipped to dispel and discuss the career myth with students. Once students reach university, more opportunities to take classes outside of their faculty or major (that still count towards their degrees) need to be introduced. Part of this breadth education could be facilitated through job shadowing and mentorship opportunities. One such program exists at the University of Alberta. They currently offer one to four day placements with community based professionals during reading week, which help students to network, gain valuable knowledge and insight, and have a better understanding of the day-to-day expectations and realities of work.23 Experiences such as these allow students to test potential career paths that they are interested in and help them make decisions as they navigate a 18 Jeffrey Jensen Arnett, "Emerging Adulthood: A Theory of Development from the Late Teens through the Twenties," American Psychologist 55, no. 5 (2000): 469-480. 19 Ibid. 20 Cathy Campbell and Peggy Dutton, Career Crafting. 21 Ibid. 22 Ministry of Education. The Ontario Curriculum Grades 9 and 10. Guidance and Career Education. 2006. Accessed on March 18, 2016 https://www.edu.gov.on.ca/eng/curriculum/secondary/guidance910currb.pdf 23 “U of A Job Shadow Week Sponsored by Servus Credit Union:, University of Alberta, accessed March 18th, 2016 http://www.caps.ualberta.ca/en/Programs-and-services/JobShadowWeek.aspx
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non-linear career path. It is critical that the province assists in facilitating relationships between the private and public sectors to provide these opportunities to students. One such example of this relationship building could be setting up working groups between the Ontario Chamber of Commerce and the Council of Ontario Universities. The development of more out-of-faculty class opportunities will be particularly helpful for students who are enrolled in accredited programs such as nursing or engineering, or those in extremely specialized programs who are often only left with one or two electives spots per academic year. Queen’s University is currently piloting a “Personal Interest Credit” program in the Arts & Science program, which will enable students to take either one full year course or two one-term courses as electives to receive pass/fail grades. This option will allow students to take courses purely out of interest or passion without the fear of negatively impacting their grade point average, and may provide students the first step into an alternate educational or career path that they were previously not considering.24
24 Mikayla Wronko, “Arts and Science to introduce pass/fail course option”, The Queen’s Journal, accessed March 17th, 2016 http://www.queensjournal.ca/story/2016-03-15/news/arts-and-science-to-introduce-passfail-courses/
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INFORMATION AND PROGRAMMING IMPROVING SKILL ARTICULATION Principle: Students should be able to clearly understand and articulate the skills they will develop in a course. Principle: Students should be encouraged to develop and attain skills that provide personal fulfillment and satisfaction. Concern: Unclear learning outcomes decrease the ability for willing and qualified students to develop and attain the skills that are most sought after by employers. Concern: Classroom learning outcomes are not intimately or explicitly linked to skills development and attainment. Concern: Students are encouraged to seek a specific career path and not to develop specific skills that provide personal fulfillment. Recommendation: Universities should mandate the presentation and articulation of learning outcomes to students in all course outlines. Recommendation: Learning outcomes should be presented to students in a way that clearly articulates the skills that students will develop and attain. There are a number of skills that students develop throughout their time spent in the classroom. Broadly, skills can be defined in three categories: technical or work-specific skills, functional or transferable skills, and self-management skills.25 Generally, technical skills are more job-specific and are not easily transferred between different working environments.26 This is in contrast to transferable skills which can be applied across different working environments, examples of which may be planning, problem-solving, and communication.27 Lastly, workplaces may value the presence of self-management skills, which are largely related to temperament and personal conduct, such as reliability and resourcefulness.28 Unfortunately, many students are not made explicitly aware that they are developing any of these skills while doing their coursework. According to the Higher Education Quality Council of Ontario (HEQCO) and Workopolis, some of the most sought after skills by Canadian employers include both oral and written communication skills, the ability to work with others, computer and document use, and administrative and organizational skills.29 Employers are cited as saying that candidates lack this experience and these skills, yet many of the most sought after skills are ones that can be readily developed throughout an undergraduate degree.30
25 Markell Steele, “Leverage Your Transferable Skills,” Futures to Motion, Inc., Transition to Industry Symposium, accessed February 19, 2016, http://www.slideshare.net/joongie69/m-steele-leverage-your-transferable-skills-1. 26 Ibid. 27 Ibid. 28 Ibid. 29 Erica Refling and Sophie Borwein, Bridging the Divide. Workopolis, “Thinkopolis VIII: The most sought after skills in Canada in 2015,” workopolis.com, accessed February 19, 2016, http://hiring.workopolis.com/research/thinkopolis/viiiskills/. 30 Workopolis, “Thinkopolis VIII: The most sought after skills.”
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Under the Quality Assurance Framework developed in 2010, all programs at Ontario universities are mandated to develop learning outcomes for students.31 Where possible, instructors should ensure that all teaching and learning conducted throughout a course aligns intimately with these learning outcomes.32 This intimate alignment is critical as it will allow students to clearly understand the learning outcomes that they are attaining and more clearly pair these with skill attainment. If students are unclear and unsure about the learning outcomes they are expected to get from a class, this could hamper their ability to acknowledge and articulate the skills they learn while attending classes to potential employers. Learning outcomes should be explicitly articulated to students throughout course delivery, such that they realize the skills that they are developing. Examples of these skills are time management, critical thinking, and communication skills among others, which fall under the transferable skills and self-management skills categories. One way in which this information could be conveyed is by identifying overarching skills that will be developed upon completion of a course and stating these explicitly on course outlines. Another means may be a professor explicitly stating to students which skills will be developed by completing a particular assignment. By articulating which skills will be developed to students each time they are engaging with particular elements of a course, they will have a better understanding of the new skills that they have acquired. In turn, students themselves can better articulate their acquired skills to potential employers, which would reasonably assist them in finding employment. Beyond explicitly articulating to students the skills that they will develop via course outlines or prior to completion of assignments, self-reflection is a critical tool that enables students to selfidentify and realize the skills they have developed. According to the Association for Experiential Education, reflection is one of the key components required to make experiential education effective, as it places students at the forefront of their own learning.33 This reflection can be carried out in a number of forms, including formalized reflection-based assignments such as presentations or journaling, or less formal activities such as discussion between students. In recognition of this, institutions should mandate students to complete a reflective exercise at the end of any work term that allows them to reflect on their term, as well as outline and synthesize new skills and knowledge gained throughout the experiential learning opportunity. For a more detailed explanation on OUSA’s stance on learning outcomes in the context of employment, please refer to the “Postgraduate Outcomes” section of the Teaching and Assessment Policy Paper published Fall 2015.
COLLECTING AND DISSEMINATING DATA Principle: Students should have reliable and easily attainable labour market information. Concern: Students are not made aware of emerging labour market trends and needs, which makes for uncertain transitions and entries into the workplace. Concern: Government and employers do not share the same understanding of labour market needs and trends. 31 Quality Assurance Transition/Implementation Task Force and Ontario Council of Academic Vice-Presidents’ Executive Committee, Quality Assurance Framework (Toronto: Ontario Universities Council on Quality Assurance, 2014). 32 John Biggs and Catherine Tang, Teaching for Quality Learning at University (Maidenhead: Open University Press, 2011). 33 Centre for Teaching Excellence, “Experiential Learning,” University of Waterloo, accessed October 5th, 2015, https://uwaterloo.ca/centre-for-teaching-excellence/resources/integrative-learning/experiential-learning.
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Recommendation: Universities and government should work with employers to understand emerging and developing labour market needs and trends, and then convey this information to students. Recommendation: The Provincial government should broadly provide detailed and nuanced information and data on recent graduate employment outcomes. It is paramount that students have access to easily attainable labour market information, but unfortunately this is not the case. Many Ontario students have trouble keeping up with the everchanging needs of today’s labour market. The transition from post-secondary education to work force has become longer over the past few years.34 Students are not made aware of labour market trends and this makes it difficult for graduates to find a permanent, career-ladder job that is directly related to their education. Also economic crises exacerbate structural problems that affect the transition from post secondary education to the work place.35 In periods of economic and financial crisis, there is a reduction in labour demand, which leads to university graduates competing with more job seekers for fewer openings. Currently there is a lack of reliable, comparable data about the PSE sector. The key performance indicators (KPIs) that universities report are not very useful. Universities only have to report on graduation rate, employment rate, graduation satisfaction, and loan default rates.36 These reports do not provide details as to what kinds of jobs students get when they graduate, nor do they specify and quantify graduate employment outcomes. On October 7th, 2015, Bill 127: Pathways to Postsecondary Excellence (PSE) Act sponsored by Member of Provincial Parliament Yvan Baker, was carried through first reading.37 This bill focuses on granting authority to an arms-length government body to aggregate and report PSE outcomes in a comparable fashion. This Bill supports the principles of data collection and accountability that are intrinsic and crucial to student success, and will ensure that students pursuing PSE will have a wide variety of resources available for them to choose the right institution and program for them. In addition, this Bill would mandate information such as graduate employment and educational status, graduate satisfaction with their education, and employer satisfaction with graduates to be collected by HEQCO, which would motivate universities to improve in these areas and provide students with valuable, provincially-collected data.38 OUSA is fully behind the principle of this bill and supports it. By adopting this bill, students would have better access to information about the postsecondary sector and better access to nuanced graduate employment outcomes. In addition, this new legislation will require universities and the government to work with employers to discuss labour market needs and relay this information to students. Specifically, institutions should engage in conversations with Cathy Campbell and Peggy Dutton, Career Crafting Misbash Tanveer Chouldry, Enrico Marelli, and Marcello Signorelli, Youth Unemployment and the Impact of Financial Crises (Chieti: XXV Convegno Nazionale di Economia del Lavoro, Universita degli Studi G.D’Annunzio, September 9-10, 2010) 36 Office of Institutional Research and Analysis, “Graduation, Employment 2014,” McMaster University, accessed February 20, 2016, http://www.mcmaster.ca/avpira/OSAP/OSAP_2014.html. 37 Yvan Baker, Private Member’s Bill, Bill 127: An act to amend the Higher Education Quality Council of Ontario Act, 2005 to require the Council to collect and public information in respect of certain educational institutions (Toronto: Legislative Assembly of Ontario, 2015). 38 Ibid. 34 35
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employers in their region to better understand the local labour market trends. The government should research provincial trends with respect to labour market needs and make this readily available to students. Lastly this bill will ensure that the province is committed to keeping the data as up to date as possible.
OPTIMIZING CAREER SERVICES Principle: Career centres should play a key role in helping students get in-study and postgraduate employment opportunities. Principle: All undergraduate students should have access to information and programming that increases their understanding of how and where to get a job. Concern: First year students are expected to know what steps to take in order to attain a particular profession after graduation. Concern: Students are not provided adequate or sufficient information on employment opportunities that they qualify for. Concern: Student ancillary fees currently make up the majority of funding to career services. Recommendation: The provincial government should provide envelope funding to fund career services. Recommendation: Universities should make all students aware of career services as soon as they come into university. Recommendation: Universities should designate additional funding to implement new and enhanced programs that provide information to students on available employment opportunities. Career services play a key role in the success of undergraduate students throughout their university careers.39 They offer a wide array of important services including but not limited to career fairs, resume critiques, and employment advising.40 They assist students in getting jobs during their undergraduate studies as well as after their graduation. All students enrolled in universities should be able to access career services in their various institutions. Universities should encourage students to seek career advice as early as possible so that they can navigate through various pathways towards achieving a career related to their field of study. By encouraging students to access career services as soon as they arrive on campus, students have the chance to plan their undergraduate career to attain the skillsets and experiences needed to fulfill their goals and aspirations. First year students are often expected to know what steps to take in order to attain a particular profession after they graduate, but this is unrealistic as most first years who come into university are still getting accustomed to the university culture and their surroundings. This is not helped by the fact that there is a stigma associated with seeking advice from guidance counsellors in high school. Students in high school instead turn to family and friends as a major source of information.41 By not seeking assistance from guidance counsellors, students who come into university are already at a disadvantage when it comes to their exposure to career counselling, 39 Barbara A. Smith, Lauri Mills, Norman E. Amundson, Spencer Niles, Hyung Joon Yoon, and Hyoyoen In, “What helps and Hinders the Hopefulness of Post-Secondary Students Who Have Experienced Significant Barriers,” The Canadian Journal of Career Development 13, (November 2014): 60-74. 40 Council of Ontario Universities, #MyCareer: How Ontario university career services prepare students for the future (Toronto: Council of Ontario Universities, 2012). 41 Canadian Alliance of Student Associations, The Illiteracy of the Literate: The Lack of Financial Aid Knowledge among Canadian University Students (Ottawa: Canadian Alliance of Student Associations, 2010).
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making it even more important that they take advantage of the career services universities have to offer. Career services, which are meant to be a key resource for undergraduate students, are greatly underused by students. In 2014 the Canadian University Survey Consortium found only 13 percent of middle-year students use career-counselling services.42 In the same survey, 83 percent of students who took advantage of these services claimed to be satisfied or very satisfied with what was offered.43 This shows that the career services being offered at least meet students’ standards and provide good value for those who actually use them. More students should be using career services. To encourage this, universities should work on promotional and other strategies to get more students using the career centre services that are offered. Laurier Brantford is a university that has focused on increasing the use of its career services. In a recent campus visit by OUSA to the Career Development Centre at Laurier’s Brantford campus, one of the ways that was discussed to get more students engaged with career centres was offering incentives to get students in the door. A specific example from Laurier Brantford is offering career development certificates to students who take courses with the Career Development Centre. This has been going on for five years at Laurier and has been positively received by both the administration and the students.44 Another way that was discussed was to focus heavily on promotions through various channels including, but not limited to, social media, paper posters, and boothing/tabling.45 Since career services play an essential role in a lot of undergraduate careers and prepare students for the workplace, the burden of funding career services should not fall solely on students. At the university of Waterloo for example, student ancillary fees are used to fund 100 percent of the career services.46 To avoid this, the government should provide envelope funding to institutions that is meant to solely fund career services. In most cases, students do not receive adequate or sufficient information on employment opportunities that they qualify for. The provincial government and universities need to designate more funding to this area. By implementing new and enhancing existing programs, universities can equip students with the necessary information needed to acquire employment. Additionally, employers in today’s job market are more focused on soft skills rather than technical skills when it comes to hiring new applicants.47 It is paramount that universities should allocate funding to create workshops, seminars, and sessions that allow students to learn various soft skills such as communication skills, organizational skills, time management skills, and writing. The student success centre at McMaster University offers time management workshops that teach students how to balance their workload while prioritizing various tasks.48 The Career centre at the University of Waterloo offers various workshops that teach students how to enhance their writing skills, specifically on how to improve writing resumes, cover letters, letter of intent, and personal
42 Prairie Research Associates, 2014 Middle-Year University Student Survey: Master Report (Ottawa: Canadian University Survey Consortium, 2014). 43 Ibid. 44 Interview with a supervisor of a career development centre at an OUSA member institution, October 27, 2015. 45 Ibid. 46 Unreleased report from the Student services advisory committee of the University of Waterloo, 2016. 47 Workopolis, “Thinkopolis VIII: The most sought after skills.” 48 McMaster University, Academic Skills Workshop (McMaster University, 2016)
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statements.49 These workshops offer students the chance to gain soft skills that allow them to adapt to the ever-changing workforce.
49
University of Waterloo, Centre for Career Action (University of Waterloo, 2016)
17
IN-STUDY EMPLOYMENT ACCUMULATING JOB EXPERIENCE AND BUILDING NETWORKS Principle: All students should have access to in-study employment opportunities in their field of study. Principle: Networking is a fundamental skill to finding work after graduation and students should have access to networking opportunities while in school. Concern: A limited amount of students work in positions related to their field of study while they attend university. Concern: Employers are looking for related job experience for entry-level positions. Concern: Academic demands make it difficult for students to find meaningful employment experiences in-study. Recommendation: The Ontario government should provide wage subsidies to all employers (with a focus on small and medium sized businesses) for students to gain part-time experience in their particular field of study. Recommendation: The provincial government should facilitate relationships between the private sector and universities to match student talent with existing and relevant in-study employment opportunities. As mentioned previously, the number one reason why students attend university is to find a job after graduation, preferably related to their field of study. Students are looking to apply the knowledge they have gained at university and should have the opportunity to do so in-study. While there are a limited number of students who are able to find work related to their field of study at university or in the summer, the majority of students struggle to find meaningful experience before graduating. OUSA’s own research shows that if students do decide to work while in university, it will likely be less than 30 hours per week and that students struggle to find part-time work that is relatable to their studies. According to the most recent Ontario Postsecondary Student Survey, of the 38 percent of our members who were working in study in Fall 2015, only 32 percent of them reported that their current job was related to their field of study.50 In addition, a study conducted in 2012 by the Higher Education Strategy Associates showed that approximately 60 percent of students who worked in the summer and studied in the Humanities or Social Science faculties were employed in jobs that did not require postsecondary education.51 While some students will choose to apply to opportunities of this nature, OUSA wants to ensure that gainful employment is available throughout students’ university careers for those that want it. It should also be noted that there is a misconception that having a post-secondary degree is enough to apply for an entry-level position. Employers are expecting students to have work experience related to their education alongside their degree once they have graduated. A study conducted by the Higher Education Quality Council of Ontario showed that on average, employers that requested work experience for an entry level position asked for a minimum of one 50 Unpublished survey results from the 2015 Ontario Postsecondary Student Survey, conducted by the Ontario Undergraduate Student Alliance, administered by CCI Research Inc., November 2015. 51 Jacqueline Lambert and Alex Usher, Making the Most of It: Canadian Student Employment in Summer 2012, Canadian Education Project Insight Brief (Toronto: Higher Education Strategy Associates, 2012).
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and a half years of work experience to a maximum of two years of work experience.52 Students must prioritize their academic demands, which means that they are less able to accrue two years of work experience in one position or field, and especially not in their field of study. The government should provide wage subsidies to employers so students can gain part-time experience in their field of study. Wage subsidies can help with the costs of employment within the organization and encourages hiring students throughout the school term or summer by diluting some of the financial risk. OUSA believes in the power of networking and students should have the opportunity to grow their own networks throughout their university careers. While many universities in Ontario have networking workshops or presentations to prepare for the working world, OUSA recommends the provincial government facilitate relationships between the private sector and institutions so students can use their skills to network and build relationships with established professionals. According to a survey conducted by Right Management, 46 percent of participants found a job through networking in 2012, compared to the second most successful way of finding employment through job boards (at 25 percent).53 In addition, ConnectUs Canada conducted a survey where approximately 64 percent of people said networking helped with their career advancement.54 With high success rates and benefits, students should be exposed to more opportunities to network throughout and after university. These relationships can be built at business socials where students can network with professionals to build relationships. Also local, small- and medium-sized businesses can look for talent within the university and develop lasting relationships with institutions. In October 2015, Universities Canada outlined five new commitments to Canadians. One of these commitments is, "To help build a stronger Canada through collaboration and partnerships with the private sector, communities, government and other education institutions in Canada and around the world."55 Universities are asking for more relationships with the private sector, and the provincial government should also facilitate these types of relationships to ensure our students are ready for the working world.
ACHIEVING EMPLOYMENT EQUITY Principle: All students should have equal access to and experience equal benefits from employment. Concern: Students in marginalized populations face discrimination and can experience difficulty finding employment Recommendation: Student job programs should invest in and incentivize certain targeted employment programs for those with higher rates of unemployment or those facing barriers to employment.
52 Sophie Borwein, Bridging the Divide, Part I: What Canadian Job Ads Said (Toronto, Higher Education Quality Council of Ontario, 2014). 53 Right Management ThoughtWire Blog; Networking, Not Internet Cruising, Still Lands Most Jobs for Those in Career Transition,” blog entry by Monika Morrow, May 8, 2013. 54 ConnectUs Communications Canada & PeopleCoach, Canadian Networking and Its Impact on Careers, Business and Economy: A Survey of Networking Practices, Systems and Opinions (Oakville: ConnectUs Communications Canada & PeopleCoach, 2009). 55 Universities Canada, Canada’s universities’ commitments to Canadians (Ottawa: Universities Canada, 2015).
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Recommendation: The province should legislate that employers decouple names from applications. OUSA believes in employment equity, meaning no person should be denied employment opportunities and benefits for reasons unrelated to merit. The goal is to eliminate racist, ableist, and sexist barriers to groups who may not have the same opportunities for employment. Unfortunately, research shows that marginalized groups generally have a higher unemployment rate than non-marginalized groups in Ontario. For example, according to Statistics Canada’s Labour Force Survey, the unemployment rate of Aboriginal peoples was 12.6 percent in 2013, above the rate of 7.5 percent for non-Aboriginals.56 To add, people with disabilities also face significant barriers to employment; as seen in Figure 2, the more severe the disability, the harder it is to find employment.57 Youth between the ages of 25 and 34 with a disability were also more likely to have perceived discrimination in hiring processes, as were those with severe or very severe disabilities. In fact, 33 percent of persons within this age group with a severe or very severe disability believed that they had been refused a job because of their condition.58 Figure 2: Employment rate of persons with and 1 without a disability, adjusted, 2011. It should also be noted that there are discrepancies in pay for women and people of colour. In 2011, the Wellesley Institute and Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives reported visible minority Canadian workers earned 81.4 cents for every dollar paid to their caucasian counterparts.59 The report explained a “colour code” that is keeping visible minorities out of jobs in the Canadian labour market.60 The report also confirmed that such a colour code persisted for secondgeneration Canadians with similar education and age, though the gap narrowed slightly.61 According to Statistics Canada, women aged 17 to 64 employed full-time had average hourly wages that were 77 percent of those of men in 1981; in 2011, the corresponding figure was 87 percent. 62 When gender differences in industry, occupation, education, age, job tenure, province 56 Employment and Social Development Canada, “Client Segment Profile: Aboriginal Peoples - Ontario - June 2014,” Government of Canada, last modified November 10, 2014, http://www.esdc.gc.ca/eng/jobs/lmi/publications/csp/abor/ontario/jun2014.shtml. 57 Martin Turcotte, Insights on Canadian Society: Persons with disabilities and employment (Ottawa, Minister Responsible for Statistics Canada, 2014). 58 Ibid. 59 Sheila Block and Grace-Edward Galabuzi, Canada’s Colour Coded Labour Market: The gap for racialized workers (Toronto: Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives and The Wellesley Institute, 2011). 60 Sheila Block and Grace-Edward Galabuzi, Canada’s Colour Coded Labour Market. 61 Ibid. 62 Rene Morissette, Garnett Picot, and Yuqian Lu, “The Evolution of Canadian Wages over the Last Three Decades,” Analytical Studies Branch Research Paper Series (Ottawa: Minister responsible for Statistics Canada, 2013).
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of residence, marital status, and union status were taken into account, women’s’ wages still amounted to only 92 percent of men’s in 2011.63 These are only a few examples of the types of discrimination multiple marginalized groups face in Canadian workplaces. OUSA believes the government should invest into more employment programs that aim to find gainful employment post-graduation for those who identify with marginalized groups. These programs should incorporate networking and mentorship components to help students throughout university meet potential employers and gain skills for the labour market in the future. OUSA also believes that to minimize discrimination for marginalized groups during employment, the provincial government should legislate the decoupling of names from applications. Studies show that foreign sounding names get fewer callbacks than those with domestic-sounding names.64 It should be noted though that studies suggest that anonymizing resumes is most useful in the first stage of hiring (resume screening). This strategy alone may not be sufficient to prevent hiring discrimination due to other subtle identifiers.65
Morissette, Picot, and Lu, “The Evolution of Canadian Wages.” Eva Derous and Ann Marie Ryan, “Documenting the adverse impact of resume screening: Degree of ethnic identification matters,” International Journal of Selection and Assessment 20, no. 4 (2012): 464-474. 65 Ibid. 63
64
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EXPERIENTIAL LEARNING INCREASING ACCESS Principle: All willing and qualified students should be able to benefit from experiential learning opportunities during their university career. Principle: Diverse forms of experiential learning should be made available to all willing and qualified students. Principle: Experiential learning opportunities should enhance students’ employment prospects. Concern: Many students do not have access to high-quality experiential learning opportunities during their undergraduate studies. Recommendation: The province should provide financial incentives to universities to create experiential learning opportunities that are available to all students. Recommendation: The province should encourage the development of alternative experiential learning opportunities to co-op programs such as internships and job shadowing to better suit program requirements and needs. Experiential learning opportunities have many benefits that supplement a student’s postsecondary education. Students often look to experiential learning opportunities to fill education gaps that are not provided in the classroom. Students, employers, and postsecondary institutions recognize the benefits of experiential learning opportunities; benefits include higher graduation rates, higher rates of mentorship from faculty and professional contacts, and better employment outcomes. 66 Experiential learning opportunities provide students with better employment prospects during and after their postsecondary education. In a study looking at the hopefulness of postsecondary students, students cited having professional role models, feeling skilled, having passion, and having opportunities as contributing to their optimism about their future.67 Experiential learning opportunities are able to promote these contributing factors by connecting students with potential mentors and providing them with opportunities to develop their professional skills. It is important that there be a wide variety of experiential learning opportunities that fit program requirements and philosophies. Indeed, it would be unwise to try and apply a one-size-fits-all model to experiential learning opportunities across programs; for example, clinical placements are far better suited to students in health sciences than students in visual arts. While co-op programs are the most widespread form of work-integrated learning opportunities, they are often not the best experiential learning opportunity for every discipline. In Figure 3, Education has the second highest participation rate in work-integrated learning opportunities, at 87 percent, and most of these opportunities consist of practicums that are best suited to these programs. Community-service learning is one type of experiential learning opportunity that allows students to better explore career opportunities. Community-service learning allows students to experience a wide variety of career opportunities and helps them to better understand their potential career
66 May Luong, The financial impact of student loans (Ottawa: Minister responsible for Statistics Canada, 2010). J. Gilmore, The 2008 Canadian Immigrant Labour Market: Analysis of Quality of Employment (Minister responsible for Statistics Canada, 2009). 67 Barbara A. Smith, et al., “What helps and Hinders the Hopefulness of Post-Secondary Students.”
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HELPFUL ASIDE Defining Work-Integrated Learning Opportunities Co-op: Work experience that is part of an academic program done during a school term; regulated under the Canadian Association for Co-Operative Education. Internship: Unregulated work experience where the intern is not be considered an employee rather, they are “persons receiving training,” as described in the Employment Standards Act. Practicum: Supervised practical application of a previously or currently studied theory; common for education and medical programs. Clinical placements: A work placement that is part of an academic program and for which students receive academic credit. Certain programs, like nursing, require clinical placements as part of accreditation processes. Field placements: Work placement that is part of an academic program and for which students receive academic credit. Design/Capstone projects: Independent project for which the student receives academic credit and is supervised as a class. Service Learning: Volunteer experience relevant to the field of study that is incorporated into class requirements.
choices, which is particularly beneficial in academic programs that do not have clear career outcomes. 68 There are varying levels of involvement in experiential learning opportunities in Ontario’s post-secondary institutions. Of the 9,176 responses to the 2015 Ontario Postsecondary Student Survey, 44 percent of OUSA’s members replied that they were not enrolled in a program with work-integrated learning opportunities, while 56 percent responded that their program had a mandatory or optional work-integrated learning component, where work-integrated learning includes practicums, clinical placements, field placements, and service learning (see “Helpful Aside”). While workintegrated learning opportunities do not reflect the whole spectrum of experiential learning opportunities available to students, they are often the most impactful and comprehensive types of experiential learning opportunities available to students.
There are also varying levels of involvement in work-integrated learning opportunities Research Positions: Research supervised outside between disciplines. Figure 3 (below) shows of academic requirements; can be paid or unpaid work. the subjects with the highest and lowest proportions of students involved in There are many forms of experiential learning that provide varying degrees of gainful work experience mandatory or optional work-integrated and value. For more information on a wider variety learning components. Eighty-eight percent of of experiential learning opportunities, refer to students in Engineering, Architecture, and OUSA’s standing policy paper on the Broader Learning Environment. Related Technologies indicated they had a work-integrated learning component to their degree, while only 32 percent of students in Humanities, Social Science, and Visual and Performing Arts indicated mandatory or optional work-integrated learning opportunities.
68 Mark Baetz, Chris McEvoy, Keith Adamson, and Colleen Loomis, “Understanding the Possible Impact of a Community Service Learning Experience during University on Career Development,” The Canadian Journal of Career Development 11, no. 1, (November 2012): 29-37.
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Subject
Figure 3: Subjects with the highest and lowest proportion of students involved in work-integrated learning.69
Engineering, Architecture and Related Technologies
88%
Education
87% 73%
Mathematics, Computer and Information Sciences Humanities and Social Sciences
32%
Visual and Performing Arts
32% 17%
Law 0%
20%
40%
60%
80%
100%
Participation in Work-Integrated Learning
n = 4241
OUSA believes that students from all subjects and disciplines should have access to experiential learning opportunities. With only 56 percent of students indicating they had access to workintegrated learning opportunities, there is clearly a large gap that remains to be filled. It is important that there is equitable access to experiential learning opportunities for all students across all subjects and disciplines in order to provide skills to improve employment outcomes of students. The government of Ontario should also incentivize institutions by adapting their provincial funding formula. In OUSA's 2015 funding formula review submission, it was recommended that the Basic Income Unit weighting system be modified to account for higher-impact experiences.70 Experiential learning opportunities have large, positive impacts on students’ academic or professional opportunities. The government could incentivize the inclusion of experiential learning by allocating more money to universities that have students enrolled in these highimpact learning opportunities, which could include practicums and community service programs, where students gain practical professional experience. The government of Ontario has the ability to promote these opportunities for undergraduate students and help improve their employability while strengthening Ontario’s workforce.
EXPANDING CO-OP AND INTERNSHIP OPPORTUNITIES Principle: Co-op programs and internships provide valuable work experience to students during their undergraduate careers and supplement their academic learning. Principle: All programs with co-op and internship options must have the capacity to meet student demand. Concern: There is currently a higher demand for co-op opportunities than jobs and placements to support them.
69 Unpublished survey results from the 2015 Ontario Postsecondary Student Survey, conducted by the Ontario Undergraduate Student Alliance, administered by CCI Research Inc., November 2015. 70 Sean Madden, Zachary Rose, and Armin Escher, Formulating Change: Recommendations for Ontario’s University Funding Formula Reform (Toronto: Ontario Undergraduate Student Alliance, 2015).
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Recommendation: The province should create grants to incentivize employers to hire students in co-op and internship programs. Recommendation: The province should work with interested universities to expand their co-op and internship programs in fields that have low work-integrated learning participation rates. Co-operative education is a valuable form of experiential and work-integrated learning available to students. In co-op programs, students alternate between terms of studying and working in order to complement their academic experience with professional work experience. Co-op programs provide students with valuable work experience before graduation, with some students already having two years of work experience by the time they graduate.71 Students enrolled in coop programs receive recognition on their academic transcripts for their co-op experiences. Many academic programs benefit greatly from professional experience being incorporated into the degree requirements for students and it supplements their learning. Programs with internship components as part of their academic requirements serve a similar purpose to co-op programs. Students enrolled in programs with internship components will receive relevant work experience during their academic career, but in a less formal and regulated structure than co-op programs. Many programs with internship components require students to find their own placements that are not facilitated by the university. Students in programs with internship components do not always receive academic credit or recognition in their transcripts through the completion of internships. Indeed, students in these programs have better rates of employment than their peers who are not in these programs. As demonstrated in Table 1, students who had been in co-op programs had a 92 percent employment rate six months after graduation, while students not in co-op programs had an 87 percent employment rate. More significantly however, 93 percent of students who had completed a co-op program were employed full time, while only 79 percent of students who had not completed co-op were employed full time. Table 1: Co-op graduate employment statistics. 72 Two years after graduation
Co-Op
Co-Op
Non Co-op
Non Co-op
91.64%
87.03%
95.76%
92.80%
Not Employed
21%
29%
15%
20%
Offered
2%
2%
1%
2%
75%
67%
81%
75%
Self-Employed
0%
3%
3%
3%
30 hours or more
93%
79%
93%
83%
7%
21%
7%
17%
Employment Rate
Employment Status Employed FT or PT
Full-time or Parttime
Six months after graduation
Less than 30 hours
71 Co-operative Education, “About Co-operative Education,” University of Waterloo, accessed March 3, 2016, https://uwaterloo.ca/co-operative-education/about-co-operative-education. 72 Postsecondary Education Partners’ Gateway, “University Employment Outcomes, Graduation and Student Loan Default Rates,” Ontario Ministry of Training, Colleges and Universities, last modified March 11, 2014, http://www.iaccess.gov.on.ca/OSAPRatesWeb/en/index.html.
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Evidently, students who were enrolled in co-op programs experienced better employment outcomes than their peers who were not in co-op programs. Six months after graduation, 94 percent of students who were enrolled in a co-op program were employed using the skills they had developed in post-secondary education, while only 78 percent of students who had not done co-op were using their skills.73 Two years after graduation, there was still an 11-percentage point difference, between 96 percent and 85 percent respectively.74 There are similar gaps between co-op and non-co-op students when considering how related their employment is to the subject matter they studied. Six months after graduation, 88 percent of graduates from co-op programs indicated that their employment was closely or somewhat related to the subject matter they studied, while only 68 percent of students who did not graduate from a co-op program indicated the same thing. Two years after graduation, there was still a 15percentage point difference, at 89 percent and 74 percent respectively. While the relation of skills and subject matter of the employment after graduation do not always indicate employment satisfaction, they provide a useful indication of how valuable graduates believe their degrees to be. Figure 4 shows the salaries of students who were enrolled in co-op programs and students who were not enrolled in co-op programs six months and two years after graduation. Students in co-op programs earn more after graduation than students who were not enrolled in co-op programs. Figure 4: Co-op and non co-op graduate salary outcomes, six months and two years after graduation.
Co-op (6 mo.)
Co-op (2 yr.)
Non Co-op (6 mo.)
Non Co-op (2 yr.)
% of Graduates
50% 45% 40% 35% 30% 25% 20% 15% 10% 5% 0% 0-$20,000
$20,001 - 40,000 $40,001 - 60,000 $60,001-80,000 $80,001 and over Salary
Co-op programs and programs with internship components make up the vast majority of opportunities within more broadly defined “work-integrated learning.” In two separate surveys by the Higher Education Quality Council of Ontario from 2013 and 2014 co-op placements and internship programs made up the majority of work-integrated learning opportunities.75 Co-op
Postsecondary Education Partners’ Gateway, “University Employment Outcomes.” Ibid. 75 Julie Peters, Peggy Sattler, and Jenna Kelland, Work Integrated Learning in Ontario’s Postsecondary Sector: The Pathways of Recent College and University Graduates (Toronto: Higher Education Quality Council of Ontario, 2014), 20. 73
74
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programs often require more time spent on work terms than programs with internship requirements. The Canadian Association for Co-Operative Education, the accreditation body for co-op programs in Canada, requires that “the time spent in periods of work experience must be at least thirty per cent of the time spent in academic study.”76 Conversely, programs with internship requirements may require as little as only one term or less for completion of the internship requirement. There is however a wide range of participation in these programs across subjects and disciplines. Figure 5 shows the variety of subject areas for those registered in a program that offers workintegrated learning. While work-integrated learning will include experiential learning opportunities other than co-op, this data nonetheless indicates clear discrepancies in which programs have potential access to co-op. The top three subject areas (Business, Management, and Public Administration; Engineering, Architecture, and Related Technologies; and Health Sciences and Medicine) account for nearly half of the students enrolled in a program that offers workintegrated learning. This suggests that students in certain programs and fields are more likely to be able to register in a co-op program than others. Figure 3 from the previous section about access to experiential learning shows a similar picture. In OUSA’s Ontario Postsecondary Student Survey, many students cited improvement to co-op and internship programs as one of the most significant ways their undergraduate experience could be enhanced. Some of the comments made by students were the following: “I would love to see more job, internship and co-op opportunities. I feel that if my program (English Literature) offered co-op, I would have a much better chance of getting a job after I graduate.” “I believe that universities should include more hands-on learning opportunities for students. I am completing my Bachelor of Social Work post-graduate degree in which I am completing a 10 month placement. I would have loved to have placements or even a co-op option for my Bachelor of Arts degree.” “I think the Social Sciences program needs to add a co-op option, and it should be mandatory so everyone is encouraged to find a job in their field … instead of working jobs that are not in our field.”77 In these responses, students were clear that they desired more work-integrated learning opportunities in order to gain “real-world knowledge” and find out about career opportunities that are available to them. Students are able to find clearer career direction as well as gain job experience through these opportunities.
Peggy Sattler and Julie Peters, Work-Integrated Learning in Ontario’s Postsecondary Sector: The Experience of Ontario Graduates (Toronto: Higher Education Quality Council of Ontario, 2013), 41. 76 Canadian Association for Co-operative Education, “Co-operative Education Definition,” Canadian Association for Cooperative Education, accessed March 19, 2016, http://www.cafce.ca/coop-defined.html. 77 Unpublished survey results from the 2015 Ontario Postsecondary Student Survey, conducted by the Ontario Undergraduate Student Alliance, administered by CCI Research Inc., November 2015.
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Figure 5: Proportion of students reporting work-integrated learning participation, by subject.78
18%
Business, Management and Public Administration
16%
Engineering, Architecture and Related Technologies
13%
Health Sciences and Medicine
12%
Humanities and Social Sciences
11%
Subject
Other
9%
Education
8%
Mathematics, Computer and Information Sciences
7%
Physical and Life Sciences
3%
Agriculture, Environmental Sciences and
2%
Health, Parks, Recreation and Leisure Visual and Performing Arts
1%
Inter-disciplinary Studies
1% 0.4%
Law 0% n = 5148
5%
10%
15%
20%
Participation in Work-Integrated Learning
It is clear that participation in a co-op program enhances students’ employability after graduation and has overall positive benefits for the system as a whole. All willing and qualified students should be able to access a co-op opportunity during their postsecondary education. Institutions should always strive for high placement rates in their co-op programs by actively recruiting employers so that students applying for co-op programs are not being misled regarding their potential for success in the program. The provincial government has two responsibilities for improving co-op and internship programs in Ontario. First, they should encourage the expansion of co-op and internship programs to more disciplines and subject areas. Universities should be offering co-op placements and internships to all students, regardless of their area of study. These programs should have high job placements and allow students to explore career opportunities while developing their professional skill set through diverse work-integrated learning. The provincial government should also encourage employers to hire co-op students by creating grants. This grants system should cover all employers in Ontario so that they are incentivized to hire co-op students. Under the current system of providing tax credits to employers, employers must financially compensate the co-op student for their work. This should be copied in the case of grants. Grants are most effective at encouraging employers to hire co-op students as they are short-term positions, and grants will provide one-off incentives to employers. 78 Unpublished survey results from the 2015 Ontario Postsecondary Student Survey, conducted by the Ontario Undergraduate Student Alliance, administered by CCI Research Inc., November 2015.
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In a report by HEQCO, only 33 percent of employers of students in co-op programs claimed the current tax credits offered by the government.79 In the same report, employers cited “[scheduling] student placements to meet business cycle needs” as one of the most important ways to encourage more co-op employment opportunities.80 Employers cite frustration not only with the oftenimpractical timing of co-op placements, but also with how they must budget for a short-term worker. Co-op employers must budget for the full fiscal year with tax credits despite employing students for much shorter terms. A system of grants for employers would be more effective at immediately compensating employers and encouraging better uptake of co-op students. A co-op employment grant for employers will help universities actively recruit co-op placements for their students and improve the employability and professional skill sets of Ontario’s students.
AMENDING THE EMPLOYMENT STANDARDS ACT Principle: Students who engage in work experience programs should have the same employment standards and protections as other Ontario workers. Concern: The Ontario Employment Standards Act does not cover individuals performing work in a work-experience program authorized by a university. Recommendation: The Province should amend the ESA to ensure that students engaging in work experience programs have the same standards and protections as other Ontario workers. Recommendation: The Province should frequently and thoroughly enforce the ESA using employment blitzes to prevent abuses by employers. The Ontario Employment Standards Act offers protections to workers to prevent mistreatment. Under Part III, Section 3(5) of the Employment Standards Act, “an individual who performs work under a program approved by a college of applied arts and technology or a university” is not currently covered.81 Students who are in experiential learning programs that receive payment for their work are more vulnerable to mistreatment due to this gap. OUSA believes that students should be afforded the same rights as all other employees. It is often unclear what rights students have as workers when they are participating in experiential learning programs administered by their university. Some of the protections that are given to regular workers covered under the Act include minimum wage requirements, allowances for breaks, and reasonable working schedules. Students in these paid experiential learning opportunities are concerned that they would not be given these same protections, leaving them exposed to potential mistreatment and exploitation. It is important that work experience programs include multiple forms of experiential and workintegrated learning. Some students are in these work experience programs through their academic programs, such as co-op placements and practicums for academic programs in education and medical science. However, the extension of the Employment Standards Act should also include internships that are found outside of their academic programs. Certain fields make strong recommendations to their students to pursue an internship during their summer terms while they are not in academic studies, which would fall outside of the scope of their program.
79 Peggy Sattler and Julie Peters, Work-Integrated Learning and Postsecondary Graduates: The Perspective of Ontario Employers (Toronto: Higher Education Quality Council of Ontario, 2012), 10. 80 Ibid, 65. 81 Employment Standards Act, 2015, c. 32. https://www.ontario.ca/laws/statute/00e41#BK5.
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There is no justification for this exception to the Employment Standards Act. Students enrolled in an experiential learning work program are regularly expected to perform the same tasks that regular employees do in order to gain valuable work experience, and yet they are not given the same standard of protection as their colleagues. Students are concerned this potential for mistreatment can lead to inadequate or unremitted pay and unreasonable working hours and conditions. While students may be employed for shorter periods through experiential learning programs than typical employees, students believe they should still be given the same treatment. The government of Ontario should amend the Employment Standards Act, Part III, Section 3(5) by striking Line 2, “an individual who performs work under a program approved by a college of applied arts and technology or a university.” This would resolve the concern students have that they are not fully protected under the Employment Standards Act when they are in a work program to provide experiential learning through their university. Furthermore, the Ministry of Labour should prioritize inspection blitzes of employers and industries that employ students in these programs as well as interns.82 Recent province-wide employer blitzes by the Ministry of Labour have found many employers in violation of the Employment Standards Act.83 Students and workers in precarious positions often experience these violations the most, and the government should increase the rate of these employer blitzes. The government should widely disseminate the results of these employer blitzes in order to promote better employment standards across Ontario. The government of Ontario should ensure that employers treat students registered in work experience programs and participating in internships the same as all other employees protected by the Employment Standards Act.
ELIMINATING UNPAID INTERNSHIPS Principle: Internships should provide valuable experiential learning opportunities to students during and after the completion of their degree. Principle: It is unfair to force students to participate in unpaid internships in order to meet degree requirements. Principle: Interns should receive equal pay for equal work. Concern: Students and other young workers are disproportionately involved in unpaid internships where they lack employment standards protections. Concern: Many employers exploit unpaid interns without the provincial government imposing any consequences. Concern: Certain university programs and professional accreditation bodies have internship requirements, some of which are currently unpaid. Recommendation: The province should ban employers, universities, and accreditation bodies from requiring or supporting unpaid internships. Recommendation: The provincial government should develop a grant program for low-earning businesses to enable them to pay their interns at least minimum wage. Unpaid internships are meant to provide training and experience to new workers. Unfortunately, in many cases they have become a way for employers to get free labour. The government has a
82 First Reference Talks Blog, “Ontario Ministry of Labour announces 2014-15 employment standards inspection blitzes,” blog entry by Simon Heath, April 15, 2014. 83 Sara Mojtehedzadeh, “Inspection blitz finds three-quarters of bosses breaking law,” Toronto Star, January 20, 2016, http://www.thestar.com/news/gta/2016/01/20/inspection-blitz-finds-three-quarters-of-bosses-breaking-law.html.
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responsibility to protect young workers yet, there is little public data about unpaid internships and this makes it difficult to determine the true extent of this problem. Nearly all unpaid interns are providing high quality work for their employers. Only 3.3 percent of employers who did not pay their students said that the quality of work done by students in workintegrated learning programs was not high enough to be paid.84 Currently, 70.9 percent of employers who did not pay their students said that the students in the program earned an academic credit instead of financial compensation.85 Many of these unpaid interns are making positive contributions in their workplace and while academic credit is important, it is unfair, unreasonable, and not reflective of real employment circumstances to expect them to work without financial compensation. In fact, stipulations made by Ontario’s Ministry of Labour would suggest that these placements are illegal due to the positive contributions made by student employees.86 It is imperative that interns’ pay reflects their duties and responsibilities as employees. Accreditation bodies and universities often have unpaid components incorporated into their accreditation or degree requirements. An example can be seen in the Therapeutic Recreation program at the University of Waterloo. One course, which is mandatory for completion of the program, requires students to accumulate 105 hours of unpaid work. Unpaid internships favour students coming from higher-income backgrounds, as they are able to afford to work with no financial compensation. For many students who are not being paid during an unpaid internship, they need to take on another position to support themselves, which may lead them to quit the unpaid internship or provide lower quality work than they are capable of. We feel that the expectation to work without pay negatively impacts some students’ access to and participation in work-integrated learning, ultimately depriving them of profoundly beneficially postsecondary experiences. The government must cut down on unpaid internships. This can be achieved through stronger ESA enforcement and the strengthening of current legislation to reduce the exploitation currently facilitated through accreditation and university programs. With the elimination of unpaid internships, OUSA predicts that some opportunities will be lost due to financial constraints at low earning organizations. We believe these opportunities are still extremely valuable to students and it would be detrimental if they were no longer available. A report by the Higher Education Quality Council of Ontario explained that approximately 45 percent of firms with less than ten employers and 55 percent of firms with 10 to 19 employees cited economic and financial pressures as the reason why they did not hire students for workintegrated learning.87 With this in mind, OUSA recommends the provincial government develop a new grant, where organizations would apply to receive enough money to pay a full-time intern minimum wage.
Sattler and Peters, Work-Integrated Learning and Postsecondary Graduates. Ibid. 86 Of six conditions that must be met for unpaid work to be legal in Ontario, one condition specifies that, “The employer derives little, if any, benefit from the activity of the intern while he or she is being trained.” Ministry of Labour, “Are Unpaid Internships Legal in Ontario?” Ontario Ministry of Labour, last modified June 2011, accessed January 22, 2016, http://www.labour.gov.on.ca/english/es/pubs/internships.php. 87 Sattler and Peters, Work-Integrated Learning and Postsecondary Graduates. 84 85
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OUSA recommends the government frame their program off the Serving Communities Internship Program (SCiP) developed by the Government of Alberta. SCiP brings non-profit organizations and postsecondary students together to in mutually beneficial relationships that allow interns to gain meaningful work experience and grow their networks and non-profit organizations to access valuable talent.88 Internships are offered on a part-time basis and, upon completion, the intern receives a $1000 bursary from the Government of Alberta.89
88 Serving Communities Internship Program, “Nonprofit Internships for Alberta Post-Secondary Students: How does SCiP work?” Serving Communities Internship Program, access April 1, 2016, http://joinscip.ca/about/. 89 Ibid.
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EMPLOYER TRAINING INCREASING ON-THE-JOB TRAINING AND HIRING THROUGH WAGE SUBSIDIES AND GRANTS Principle: Employees should expect to receive paid training from their employer to adequately perform their duties. Principle: Employers are in the best position to provide the training that the employees they have hired specifically need. Principle: A wide variety of incentives will be more effective in incentivizing employers to train employees. Concern: Employers do not give their employees enough on the job training. Concern: Recent graduates do not always have the technical skills that employers expect them to have. Concern: Some incentives programs do not incentivize all types of employers or are not as efficient for certain types of employers, tax credits aren’t as effective for small and medium companies as grants. Concern: The Summer Jobs Service has been cancelled. Recommendation: The province should incentivize employers to train their employees on the technical skills needed to succeed in their jobs. Recommendation: The province should reallocate current tax credit programs intended to encourage youth employment for small and medium sized businesses into upfront grants and wage subsidies for the hiring of recent graduates. Recommendation: The province should create wage subsidies and grants to enable not-forprofits to hire recent graduates. In previous generations, employers trained their newly hired employees to make them as helpful as possible to the company. Students would graduate from university and be hired by companies who would then train them. Over the years there has been a change in amount of training given to employees, a drop in 13 percent in recent years and 40 percent over the last two decades.90 This is very concerning as today’s students are now expected to be ready for the workforce before they start their first job. Employers’ expenses on training are a clear indication that they are shirking their responsibility to train their own employees. Employers often respond unreasonably to the expectation that they should provide basic training and want employees that can make immediate contributions to their bottom line. This is an area that should be the employer’s responsibility in addressing any perceptions of a skills gap. The government can incentivize employers to train their employees by giving grants to companies who provide on-the-job training. Universities are in a good position to teach students functional or employability skills that will be transferable to many different roles, but each employer has a better understanding of what they need from each employee. University graduates generally have better employment outcomes 90 Daniel Munro, Cameron MacLaine, and James Stuckey, Skills—Where Are We Today? The State of Skills and PSE in Canada (Ottawa: The Conference Board of Canada, 2014). Mowat Centre for Policy Innovation, Ontario Chamber of Commerce, and Leger Marketing, Emerging Stronger 2016 (Toronto: Mowat Centre for Policy Innovation, 2016).
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because of their transferable skills that are developed throughout their degrees. These skills make it easier for employers to train university graduates. Universities and employers are both capable of providing instruction on different types of skills and it is important that they focus on the methods and topics in which they are best. Unfortunately, universities have been forced to attempt to make students job-ready, which they are not in the best position to do. Companies would be further incentivized to train and hire new employees with grants and wage subsidies. When employers were asked to suggest what was the most important support to facilitate their participation in WIL, the most popular answer, with 24.7 percent, was that they needed financial incentives. When asked to choose all that were important from 11 options, 60.7 percent of employers said financial incentives.91 Currently hiring students for WIL opportunities can be too costly to implement for some companies.92 In a 2012 survey, 19.9 percent of employers who did not pay their WIL students said they could not afford to pay their students and extra incentives may help them.93 Employee training in Ontario is much more common among large businesses than it is among small and medium sized businesses.94 The Ontario Chamber of Commerce has found that employers who do not engaging in employee training are discouraged because of the cost, a lack of time, and limited human resource capacities (factors large business can easily overcome).95 The government needs to actively make room for these smaller enterprises to engage in training. Large firms tend to access government support for readily that small firms and for this reason, assistance should be reserved specifically for smell and medium sized businesses. At the same time, grants are preferred to tax credits due to their ability to distribute positive impacts more evenly across recipients (as has been demonstrated in different contexts).96
Munro, MacLaine, and Stuckey, Skills—Where Are We Today? Stuckey and Munro, The Need to Make Skills Work. 93 Sattler and Peters, Work-Integrated Learning and Postsecondary Graduates. 94 Andrea Holmes and Josh Hjartarson, Moving Forward Together: An Employer Perspective on the Design of Skills Training Programs in Ontario (Toronto: Essential Skills Ontario and Ontario Chamber of Commerce, 2014), 8. 95 Ibid. 96 Xiaodong Gong and Robert Breunig, “Child care assistance: Are subsidies or tax credits better?”, Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA) Discussion Paper series, 6606 (2012). 91
92
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ENTREPRENEURSHIP ENCOURAGING STUDENT ENTREPRENEURSHIP Principle: Entrepreneurial activities and programs provide students with transferable skills that they would not otherwise receive in the classroom. Principle: All willing and qualified undergraduate students should have the opportunity to get exposure to entrepreneurship. Concern: Not enough students have the opportunity to explore entrepreneurialism within their field of study. Concern: Students have limited resources to participate in entrepreneurship. Recommendation: Ontario’s universities should strive to introduce more students to entrepreneurship. Recommendation: The provincial government should create new support-based initiatives for student entrepreneurs. Recommendation: The government should encourage universities to recognize the role entrepreneurship in PSE plays today and should encourage sustainable institutional levels of financial support for entrepreneurship. In a study of 2000 students, those who participated in entrepreneurship opportunities were more employable, and performed better while employed.97 Additionally, the study found that those students took more initiative, and were more confident in the workplace. A more recent study describes students’ self-reported growth in transferable skills such as self-confidence, problem solving, and pragmatism.98 Despite commitments to the expansion of entrepreneurial activity among Ontario’s youth, entrepreneurship-mentoring centres operate outside of academic and educational activities. Even Ontario’s most prominent university incubators, the Ryerson DMZ and Waterloo’s Velocity, do not interact with most academic programming at their universities. At Ryerson, students with a pre-existing interest in entrepreneurship must opt-in to engaging with the DMZ.99 Students without an initial interest in entrepreneurship are unlikely to come into contact with entrepreneurial initiatives unless they actively seek them out. Nothing in typical university curricula encourages students to evaluate whether their skills could be applied in an entrepreneurial way or to consider if entrepreneurship is an option for them. Not every student should become an entrepreneur, or work on projects within entrepreneurial spaces, but it must be understood that most students are still not exposed to entrepreneurship despite increased resources supporting these initiatives. Nationwide universities are failing to significantly contribute to their students’ entrepreneurial skills. The Canadian University Survey Consortium found only 22 percent of Canadian graduating 97 Jason Cope and Gerald Watts, “Learning by doing—An exploration of experience, critical incidents and reflection in entrepreneurial learning,” International Journal of Entrepreneurial Behavior & Research 6, no. 3 (2000): 104-124. 98 Jodyanne Kirkwood, Kirsty Dwyer, and Brendan Gray, “Students’ reflections on the value of an entrepreneurship education,” The International Journal of Management Education 12 (2014): 307-316. 99 DMZ Ryerson University, “The DMZ Model,” Ryerson University, accessed February 23, 2016, http://dmz.ryerson.ca/about/dmz-model/.
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students and 19 percent of Canadian middle year students thought their university education contributed to their entrepreneurial skills.100 If Ontario truly seeks to create more entrepreneurs, more students must be exposed to the concepts and benefits of entrepreneurial thinking. Actors involved in entrepreneurship initiatives at universities are quick to point out that entrepreneurship must involve some risk, meaning that direct funding for spaces dedicated to entrepreneurship is unlikely to produce useful economic dividends.101 If this is the case, government funding might be more effective if targeted at educational and academic initiatives. Entrepreneurship is often placed at odds with traditional academic activity however. OUSA’s conversations with facilitators at some innovation hubs and accelerators have highlighted that reconciling a university’s educational demands with the life of an entrepreneur can be a difficult task for students.102 This implies that, despite an increasing focus on entrepreneurship within higher education, serious conversations about how entrepreneurship can be effectively incorporated into teaching and learning and be recognized with course credits has yet to happen. Although the real impacts are not yet fully understood, it is important to consider ways that entrepreneurship-specific education can be incorporated into university curricula more broadly.103 Entrepreneurship-specific education has been found to affect both human capital assets—like intention, risk-aversion, opportunity alertness, and creativity—as well as concrete entrepreneurship outcomes—like increasing numbers of startups, serial entrepreneurial activity, and decreased time to start up.104 Specifically, education-based interventions have been shown to have positive effects on the development of students’ entrepreneurial mindset, or intention to become an entrepreneur.105 Researchers have also found positive relationships between entrepreneurial mindset and students’ increased ability to connect previously unconnected pieces of information in order to identify economic opportunities.106 Negative relationships have been found between entrepreneurial mindset and increased ability to take on risk, suggesting that with education, students become more realistic in their entrepreneurial behaviour.107 While training focused education has not been found to have significant influence on entrepreneurship outcomes or the development of human capital assets, academic focused education has been found to have significant influence on entrepreneurship outcomes specifically.108 These findings suggest that “academic-focused [education], with its broader conceptual and theoretical content may be more likely to allow students to make decisions in the
100 Prairie Research Associates, 2015 Graduating University Student Survey: Master Report (Ottawa: Canadian University Survey Consortium, 2015), 23. Prairie Research Associates, 2014 Middle-Years University Student Survey, 33. 101 Valerie Fox and Hossein Rahnama (Ryerson Digital Media Zone staff) in discussion with 2013 OUSA Student Employment Policy Paper authors, March 2013. 102 Ibid. 103 Elaine C. Rideout and Denis O. Gray, “Does Entrepreneurship Education Really Work? A Review and Methodological Critique of the Empirical Literature on the Effects of University-Based Entrepreneurship Education,” Journal of Small Business Management 51, no. 3 (2013): 329-351. Bruce Martin, Jeffery J. McNally, Michael Kay, “Examining the Formation of Human Capital in Entrepreneurship: A Meta-Analysis of Entrepreneurship Education Outcomes,” Journal of Business Venturing 28, no. 2 (2013): 211-224. Marina Z. Solesvik, Paul Westhead, Harry Matlay, and Vladimir N. Parsyak, “Entrepreneurial assets and mindsets: Benefit from university entrepreneurship education investment,” Education + Training 55, no. 8/9 (2013): 748-762. 104 Ibid. 105 Solesvik, Westhead, Matlay, and Parsyak, “Entrepreneurial assets and mindsets.” 106 Ibid. 107 Ibid. 108 Martin, McNally, and Kay, “Examining the Formation of Human Capital in Entrepreneurship.”
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highly ambiguous and dynamic contexts that are required to achieve financial success and maintain a business over an extended period of time.”109 Entrepreneurship-specific education also provides students with the opportunity to gain transferable skills that can be applied in any organizational context—a concept sometimes referred to “intrapreneurialism.”110 This type of education moves away from a narrow focus on business start up, and towards the development of the characteristics that make a good entrepreneur.111 Entrepreneurship-specific education can focus on stimulating students’ creative thinking; entrepreneurial success does not wholly lie in specialist knowledge but also in the ability to attract resources, develop ideas, follow a vision, find innovative solutions, and succeed in unknown fields.112 However helpful institutional idea accelerators and incubators have been, and whatever potential entrepreneurship-specific education offers, the fact remains that student entrepreneurs face major challenges in obtaining adequate resources to engage in entrepreneurship.113 Students who start businesses during school have to juggle their workplace costs with their tuition, ancillary fees, and living expenses. For students who begin businesses after graduation, those who used student loans to help pay for their education will be required to manage that debt, limiting the amount they will be able to contribute to their entrepreneurial activities. Governments are accustomed to supporting students through the provision of integrated student loans, but this system is not a logical fit with the realities of entrepreneurship. Student entrepreneurs face vastly different types of costs and assets than a typical student. As such, new types of student support must be created in order to accommodate this new aspect of our postsecondary system. As previously mentioned, as students learn more about entrepreneurship and sharpen their entrepreneurial skills, their intentions to become an entrepreneur increase. However, increased risk awareness decreases this entrepreneurial mindset. Since “students are more oriented to higher entrepreneurial [mindsets] when they perceive less risk,” funds should be distributed to student entrepreneurs in ways that decrease perceptions of financial risk.114 The Ministry of Training, Colleges and Universities has articulated it’s intent to provide new and dedicated resources to support Ontario’s young entrepreneurs.115 This is welcome news, as student entrepreneurs are more likely to carry and refine their business skills throughout the rest of their lives. However, existing commitments to student entrepreneurs are insufficient. The provincial Youth Entrepreneurship Fund offers awareness, training, mentoring, and support to
Martin, McNally, and Kay, “Examining the Formation of Human Capital in Entrepreneurship,” 22. Solesvik, Westhead, Matlay, and Parsyak, “Entrepreneurial assets and mindsets.” 111 Solesvik, Westhead, Matlay, and Parsyak, “Entrepreneurial assets and mindsets.” Arndt Lautenschlager and Heiko Haase, “The Myth of Entrepreneurship Education: Seven Arguments Against Teaching Business Creation at Universities,” Journal of Entrepreneurship Education 14 (2011): 147-162. 112 Lautenschlager and Haase, “The Myth of Entrepreneurship Education.” 113 Solesvik, Westhead, Matlay, and Parsyak, “Entrepreneurial assets and mindsets,” 750. 114 Ibid, 758. 115 Government of Ontario, Strengthening Ontario’s Centres of Creativity, Innovation and Knowledge: A discussion paper on innovation to make our university and college system stronger (Toronto: Queen’s Printer for Ontario, 2012), 21. 109 110
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young entrepreneurs, but again, these resources are offered to students on an opt-in basis and not connected to their post-secondary studies.116 OUSA recommends that the provincial government merge the concepts of student financial assistance and entrepreneurship in the creation of any new support-based programs for Ontario’s student entrepreneurs. These programs should have the following key features: • • • • •
Involve a competitive application process, requiring that students develop business, development, and marketing plans; Take into account both academic and business costs associated with university; Award grants, opposed to loans, in order to ensure that a business’s failure does not prevent students from rebounding and beginning new ventures; Include an equity component in the fund, giving the granting entity (the government or an arms-length foundation) a stake in the success or failure of the business; and Accommodate all different types of entrepreneurship, including technological and social entrepreneurship.
New funding initiatives should have differentially sized grant amounts, allowing businesses of different sizes to be supported. This type of assistance could help to reduce financial risks for seed stage as well as early stage ventures.
MAXIMIZING ECONOMIC BENEFITS OF ENTREPRENEURSHIP Principle: Entrepreneurship and innovation are key components in increasing Ontario’s economic growth, prosperity, and productivity. Concern: Ontario has demonstrated persistently weak innovation performance and economic growth is slow. Recommendation: The provincial government should prioritize increasing entrepreneurial activities at Ontario universities by encouraging students to participate. Recommendation: The provincial government should conduct research on new entrepreneurship initiatives while monitoring and evaluating existing programs. Many commentators on Ontario economic policy estimate that economic growth will remain slow for the foreseeable future.117 The difference between the amount of research and development that is commercialized through products and technologies, and the amount that is not, is referred to as an “innovation gap.”118 Entrepreneurship is a critical component in closing this gap, which is the primary reason why many groups examining the competitiveness of Ontario consider entrepreneurship a key economic priority.119 However, despite a heavy reliance on entrepreneurial activities and education, the Conference Board of Canada expresses concern over Ontario’s persistently weak innovation performance.120
116 Tanya Blazina, “Backgrounder: Ontario Youth Jobs Strategy,” Government of Ontario Newsroom, last modified January 27, 2015, accessed February 19, 2016, https://news.ontario.ca/tcu/en/2015/01/ontario-youth-jobs-strategy.html. 117 Mowat Centre for Policy Innovation, Ontario Chamber of Commerce, Leger Marketing, Emerging Stronger 2016, 31. 118 Konrad Yakabuski, “Canada’s innovation gap,” The Globe and Mail, July 1, 2009, http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/canadas-innovation-gap/article1368640/?page=all. 119 Mowat Centre for Policy Innovation, Ontario Chamber of Commerce, and Leger Marketing, Emerging Stronger 2013 (Toronto: Mowat Centre for Policy Innovation, 2013). 120 Munro, MacLaine, and Stuckey, Where Are We Today?
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University entrepreneurship initiatives have received a great deal of attention through the province’s discussion paper on post-secondary transformation and the development of strategic mandate agreements (SMAs). In each SMA, Ontario’s vision for post-secondary education states an intention for “colleges and universities [to] drive creativity, innovation, knowledge, and community engagement through teaching and research,” where innovation is intended to refer to institutions’ roles in fostering economic development and serving the needs of the economy and labour market.121 The provincial government offers entrepreneurial learning as the solution to Ontario’s persistent lag in economic productivity in their aforementioned discussion paper.122 In fact, the Ministry positions innovation hubs, incubators, and entrepreneurship mentoring centres as central components of experiential learning.123 Still, low proportions of students report that their university education very much contributes to their entrepreneurial skills. Ontarians start fewer businesses per capita compared to their peers in other provinces.124 As a result the province continues to lag behind in terms of patent production and labour productivity.125 One way to boost Ontario’s capacity for innovation and economic growth while also alleviating youth unemployment issues is to stimulate an increase in entrepreneurial activity at Ontario universities. However, a lack of local labour market information remains a challenge to workforce development.126 In an effort to increase its own knowledge of the province, and produce reliable local datasets, the provincial government must monitor and evaluate existing initiatives intended to increase entrepreneurial activity among university students. In this way, the highest performing programs could be expanded thereby allowing these programs and the province to meet or exceed shared goals.
MONITORING PUBLIC-PRIVATE PARTNERSHIPS Principle: Collaborative partnerships between universities and private-sector businesses create entrepreneurial opportunities for students. Principle: Transparent and fair intellectual property rights agreements protect students involved in entrepreneurial ventures. Concern: Not all universities have strong protections for their students’ intellectual property. Recommendation: The provincial government should regulate intellectual property management standards to protect student researchers and incubator residents at universities. Recommendation: The provincial government should create new incentives for universities to build relationships with employers to increase their entrepreneurial activity. Collaborative partnerships between private-sector enterprises and universities have the potential to positively transform students’ academic experience. While university faculty should retain authority over the assessment of students’ performance, the learning potential that comes from 121 All of Ontario’s publicly-assisted universities have SMAs with the province, which can be viewed on the Ministry of Training, Colleges and Universities website. Ontario Ministry of Training, Colleges and Universities, “2014-17 Strategic Mandate Agreements – Universities,” Queen’s Printer for Ontario, last modified May 8, 2014, accessed February 19, 2016, http://www.tcu.gov.on.ca/pepg/publications/vision/universities.html. 122 Government of Ontario, Strengthening Ontario’s Centres of Creativity, Innovation and Knowledge: A discussion paper on innovation to make our university and college system stronger (Toronto: Queen’s Printer for Ontario, 2012), 21. 123 Ibid, 12. 124 Mowat Centre for Policy Innovation, Ontario Chamber of Commerce, and Leger Marketing, Emerging Stronger 2015 (Toronto: Mowat Centre for Policy Innovation, 2015), 9. 125 Mowat Centre for Policy Innovation, Ontario Chamber of Commerce, Leger Marketing, Emerging Stronger 2016. 126 Ibid.
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working with industry experts should not be denied, especially in the field of entrepreneurship. For example, MaRS Discovery District (the influential not-for-profit innovation hub in downtown Toronto) provides expert advice, mentorship, and connections to customer, partner, and capital networks to its venture clients claiming that, “Connections are essential for venture growth.”127 MaRS Venture Services strive to grant fledgling entrepreneurs access to a network of advisors, industry insiders, and investors in order to maximize their chances of success.128 However, these partnerships can potentially put students at a disadvantage. Intellectual property can be loosely defined as the product of intellectual or creative activity that can be protected under the law. There are various forms of legal protection, but the two that are most likely to be relevant in university environments are copyrights and patents. The Canadian Copyright Act states that the author of a work is the first owner of copyright, however where a work is created by an individual in the course of his or her employment, in the absence of an agreement to the contrary, the employer is the first owner of the copyright. Patents protect inventions – that is, creations or discoveries, which are new, not obvious, and useful. A patent prevents anyone else from using the invention without the patent owner’s permission for approximately 20 years.129 Partnerships between the public and private sectors, and students naturally create ambiguities in the relationships between multiple stakeholders who have predetermined obligations (contractual or otherwise) related to entrepreneurial objectives and intellectual properties. Student entrepreneurs must be made aware of their rights to their intellectual property, especially when engaging in complex relationships with universities, technology transfer offices, incubators, accelerators, and professional entrepreneurs. Students utilizing advice or information from these resources should retain their patent and copyrights unless they explicitly waive them through mutual agreements. In these instances, no student should be coerced into signing agreements that absolve them of their intellectual property. It is important that institutions prioritize agreements that protect students’ intellectual property rights, or in absence, provide students with fair remuneration. For example, McMaster University’s intellectual property laws are restrictive and unfair to students. In the case of any newly created or discovered intellectual property created by a student, the decision to commercialize may proceed only with the unanimous consent of several stakeholders, within a certain restrictive time frame, and still contains a provision for a public-private partnership agreement to supersede the right of the student to own newly created or discovered intellectual property arising at any of the institutions (on which the university has the first claim).130 Alternatively, University of Waterloo has a better example of intellectual property management. Under their policies, all parties are free to own full rights and commercialize any of their own intellectual property. Should a student wish to use the services of the university to commercialize their idea or research, the university will create a formal written agreement with such creatorowners whereby Waterloo incurs any costs associated with intellectual property protection (for 127 MaRS Discovery District, “Venture Services,” MaRS Discovery District, last modified 2016, accessed February 22, 2016, https://www.marsdd.com/venture-services/. 128 Ibid. 129 Canadian Intellectual Property Office, “What is intellectual property? Understand the basics,” Government of Canada, last modified December 1, 2015, accessed March 3, 2016, http://www.ic.gc.ca/eic/site/cipointernetinternetopic.nsf/eng/wr03585.html?Open&wt_src=cipo-ip-main. 130 McMaster Industry Liasion Office, “Joint Intellectual Property Policy,” McMaster University, last modified September 1, 2007, accessed March 3, 2016, http://milo.mcmaster.ca/policies/joint_ip_policy.
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example, the cost of patenting) and assigns professional staff to manage and achieve commercialization success. Under this partnership, the success from commercialization efforts is split: 75 percent to the creator-owners and 25 percent to Waterloo (or the net of the university’s recovery of intellectual property protection costs). This policy is clear, straightforward, and protects student entrepreneurs.131 Encouraging entrepreneurship is not as simple as might be initially conceived. Typically, when the government expects an outcome of the university sector, they are able to launch targeted funding, create a report-back structure, and report progress at the end of the fiscal calendar. This is not always possible with entrepreneurship outcomes. Due to substantial variability in expected goals and objectives, many different measurements exist, especially in the field of entrepreneurship-specific education.132 Considerable debate surrounds the most appropriate methods of teaching entrepreneurs and there are a variety of impacts that can develop.133 As a result, no single study has measured the overall usefulness and effectiveness towards individuals and society of educating individuals to become entrepreneurs.134 It is extremely difficult to separate the effects of entrepreneurship-specific education from individual’s self-selection into this type of programming.135 To date research has produced mixed results and so, the quality of research in this field must be improved to justify increased investment and the existence of positive economic outcomes.136 In addition to conducting research and evaluations of Ontario’s entrepreneurship initiatives, the provincial government should create new financial incentives for universities to increase their entrepreneurial activities. Institutions should be required to submit proposals for new initiatives that indicate how they will integrate their programming with local economic clusters, academic curricula, and differentiate themselves from offerings of other universities. They should also indicate how their initiative will add value to Ontario’s economy by projecting jobs created, products brought to market, ventures created, acquisitions, and other relevant entrepreneurship outcomes.
131 Secretariat & Office of General Counsel, “Policy 73 – Intellectual Property Rights,” University of Waterloo, last modified June 29, 2000, accessed March 3, 2016, https://uwaterloo.ca/secretariat-general-counsel/policies-proceduresguidelines/policy-73-intellectual-property-rights. 132 Lautenschlager and Haase, “The Myth of Entrepreneurship Education.” 133 Ibid. 134 Ibid, 153. 135 Rideout and Gray, “Does Entrepreneurship Education Really Work?” 136 Ibid.
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POLICY STATEMENT Student Employment Whereas: Highly educated students are critical to the success of Ontario’s workforce. Whereas: Students should be able to find work once they have finished their degree. Whereas: All students should be given the choice to explore multiple career and learning paths throughout their education. Whereas: All qualified students should have access to a wide breadth of learning opportunities. Whereas: Students should be able to clearly understand the skills they will develop in a course. Whereas: Students should be encouraged to develop and attain skills that provide personal fulfillment and satisfaction instead of seeking a specific career. Whereas: Students should have reliable and easily attainable access to labour market information. Whereas: Career centres should play a key role in helping students get in-study and postgraduate employment opportunities. Whereas: All qualified and willing undergraduate students should have access to information and programming that increases their understanding on how and where to get a job. Whereas: All students looking for work should have opportunities in their field of study while they attend university. Whereas: Networking is a fundamental skill to finding work after graduation. Whereas: All students should have equal access to and experience equal benefits from employment. Whereas: All willing and qualified students should be able to benefit from experiential learning opportunities during their university career. Whereas: Diverse forms of experiential learning should be made available to all willing and qualified students. Whereas: Experiential learning opportunities should enhance students’ employment prospects. Whereas: Co-op programs provide valuable work experience to students during their undergraduate careers and supplement their academic learning. Whereas: All co-op programs must have the capacity to meet student demand. Whereas: Students who engage in work experience programs should have the same employment standards and protections as other Ontario workers. Whereas: Internships should provide valuable experiential learning opportunities to students during and after the completion of their degree. Whereas: It is unfair to force students to participate in unpaid internships in order to meet degree requirements. Whereas: Interns should receive equal pay for equal work. Whereas: Employees should expect to receive paid training from their employer to adequately perform their duties. Whereas: Employers are in the best position to provide the training that their employees specifically need. Whereas: A wide variety of incentives will be more effective in incentivizing employers to train employees. Whereas: Entrepreneurial activities and programs provide students with transferable skills that they would not otherwise receive in the classroom Whereas: All willing and qualified undergraduate students should have the opportunity to get exposure to entrepreneurship. Whereas: Entrepreneurship and innovation are key components in increasing Ontario’s economic growth, prosperity, and productivity.
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Whereas: Collaborative partnerships between universities and private-sector businesses create entrepreneurial opportunities for students. Whereas: Transparent and fair intellectual property rights agreements protect students involved in entrepreneurial ventures.
Be it resolved that: The Ontario government should set a target to reach full employment for new graduates. Be it further resolved that: The Ontario government needs to better define different contributors’ roles in the Youth Employment Strategy. BIFRT: The government should initiate a cross sector consultation review of existing youth employment programs to identify gaps and inefficacies. BIFRT: The government should publicly release data on the outcomes of these programs. BIFRT: The Ontario government should ensure that students are exposed to realistic messages about their post-graduate employment outcomes. BIFRT: The Ministry of Education should adapt the high school curriculum to include career and guidance counselling that helps to dispel the career myth. BIFRT: Universities and the province should provide students with more job shadowing and career related mentorship opportunities. BIFRT: Universities should provide students with more opportunities to take classes outside of their major that will go towards their degree requirements. BIFRT: Universities should mandate the presentation and articulation of learning outcomes to students in all course outlines. BIFRT: Learning outcomes should be presented to students in a way that clearly articulates the skills that students will develop and attain. BIFRT: Universities and government should work with employers to understand emerging and developing labour market needs and trends, and then convey this information to students. BIFRT: The Provincial government should broadly provide detailed and nuanced information data on recent graduate employment outcomes. BIFRT: The provincial government should provide envelope funding to fund career services. BIFRT: Universities should make all students aware of career services as soon as they come into university. BIFRT: Universities should designate additional funding to implement new and enhanced programs that provide information to students on available employment opportunities. BIFRT: The Ontario government should provide wage subsidies to all employers (with a focus on small and medium sized businesses) for students to gain part-time experience in their particular field of study. BIFRT: The provincial government should facilitate relationships between the private sector and universities, particularly among small and medium sized enterprises and non-profit organizations. BIFRT: Student job programs should invest in and incentivize certain targeted employment programs for those with higher rates of unemployment or those facing barriers to employment. BIFRT: The province should legislate that employers decouple names from applications. BIFRT: The province should provide incentives to universities to create experiential learning opportunities that are available to all students. BIFRT: The province should encourage the development of alternative experiential learning opportunities to co-op programs such as internships and job shadowing to better suit program requirements and needs.
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BIFRT: The province should create grants to incentivize employers to hire students in co-op and internship programs. BIFRT: The province should work with interested universities to expand their co-op and internship programs in fields that have low work-integrated learning participation rates. BIFRT: The Province should amend the Employment Standards Act to ensure that students engaging in work experience programs have the same standards and protections as other Ontario workers. BIFRT: The Province should frequently and thoroughly enforce the ESA using employment blitzes to prevent abuses by employers. BIFRT: The province should ban employers, universities, and accreditation bodies from requiring or supporting unpaid internships. BIFRT: The provincial government should develop a grant program for low-earning businesses to enable them to pay their interns at least minimum wage. BIFRT: The province should incentivize employers to train their employees on the technical skills needed to succeed in their jobs. BIFRT: The province should reallocate current tax credit programs intended to encourage youth employment for small and medium sized businesses into upfront grants and wage subsidies for the hiring of recent graduates. BIFRT: The province should create wage subsidies and grants to enable not-for-profits to hire recent graduates. BIFRT: Ontario’s universities should strive to introduce more students to entrepreneurship. BIFRT: The provincial government should create new support-based initiatives for student entrepreneurs. BIFRT: The government should encourage universities to recognize the role entrepreneurship in PSE plays today and should encourage sustainable institutional levels of financial support for entrepreneurship. BIFRT: The provincial government should prioritize increasing entrepreneurial activities at Ontario universities by encouraging students to participate BIFRT: The provincial government should conduct research on new entrepreneurship initiatives while monitoring and evaluating existing programs BIFRT: The provincial government should regulate intellectual property management standards to protect student researchers and incubator residents at universities. BIFRT: The provincial government should create new incentives for universities to build relationships with employers to increase their entrepreneurial activity.
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