Coming up, the importance of social conservatives to the conservative movement, Bill Blair's attempt to grab your guns, and why university is not for everyone. The Andrew Lawton Show starts right now on TSN Canada's Most Irreverent Talk Show.
00:34:58.820undergraduate degrees who are making less than those who went in to be welders or millwrights or other things like that.
00:35:04.800And similarly, I don't think that the trades are for everyone.
00:35:07.260I think the greater question that we should be asking is, what do you want?
00:35:12.620And if the answer to that question is, I don't know yet, I feel that that often lends itself in the eyes of school guidance counselors to,
00:35:21.860OK, we'll go to university and then figure it out while you're there.
00:35:25.500Yeah. And that's an expensive lesson for kids to have to learn.
00:35:29.200And especially, you know, if you've gone into student debt to, you know, find yourself, it doesn't make much of a it's not a very good economic calculation when you could maybe spend a year working, maybe go abroad, travel, find yourself out there.
00:35:44.920But don't put yourself in a financial hole and then realize afterwards, maybe university is the right place for me and come with a more mature, serious attitude instead of, well,
00:35:56.080I'm just sort of here to find myself. So I don't necessarily have to apply all of my energy into school and I should focus more on socializing or the other the many other activities that schools now provide that are non-academic for students.
00:36:13.820Let me ask you, then, if we need to have a discussion within the academy and outside of it about the role of universities,
00:36:22.160because I think there are some people that take a very means to an end view of it where they want to be a lawyer or a doctor or an engineer and the way to get that degree is to go through this program.
00:36:32.860There are a lot of people that get a degree because they want it to make them marketable to employers.
00:36:39.300And there are employers that are, for whatever reason, saying no matter what it is, you need to have a degree in something.
00:36:46.180Do you think that these two are feeding off of each other in some way?
00:36:49.660Yes, I do. I think the over-credentialization has been very, I think it's very bad for the university because it waters down and it sort of cheapens what a degree signals.
00:37:05.500And now it's sort of just a signal that I can show up and I can pass, so I can do something.
00:37:11.660But in my estimation, four years of work experience is actually a better signal than a bachelor's degree in a general science or a general arts because of the lowering of standards at a university,
00:37:26.860because of having to accept every student and having to accommodate to those who don't find a passion or have a particular aptitude for academic materials,
00:37:38.760which, again, is not a slight and it's not meant to disparage those who aren't comfortable or may not excel at a university setting.
00:37:47.020Everybody has different strengths and weaknesses and it's the variability of human talent that allows us to have such a productive society and productive economy because we do have many different people with different skills.
00:38:03.380And the one thing that I've really noticed, and I'll speak just to my experience in Ontario, where we don't have a variety of post-secondary institutions and whatever variety we did have has been forced into a conformity.
00:38:19.420And we can just look at my employer or my university, Wilfrid Laurier University, which used to be an excellent undergraduate focused university, which meant that they didn't have an expanded graduate program and they really did tailor towards a specific demographic.
00:38:38.060But now they've positioned away from that specialty and tried to become more like all of the other universities in Ontario, comprehensive research universities with graduate programs and they're expanding out into Milton to try to get into programs like engineering, for example.
00:38:57.540We don't have an engineering school, but there's a school down the road, Waterloo University, which is internationally acclaimed for its engineering.
00:39:05.780And it doesn't make any sense to try to make every single university in this province exactly the same as every other university.
00:39:13.660And I think that's where some of the problem lies with post-secondary education is we don't have we don't have different options for students.
00:39:22.700We have colleges and we have universities, but all the colleges are basically the same and all the universities now are basically the same.
00:39:31.600So students don't have very many places to go.
00:39:36.160And so you you force students who may have fit in one type of a university.
00:39:41.460And I don't know exactly what types of post-secondary schools we could have.
00:39:46.040That's something I would I would prefer to let the market decide and to let consumers demand and for entrepreneurs to provide for them.
00:39:53.020But we simply just don't have that option in this province where it seems like we can only have one type.
00:39:58.440Every university has to be the same. And I think this really discourages students and it limits the options that are available to them so that we may have a student.
00:40:08.360Right. Who could have excelled in a maybe a more practical kind of a of a university setting.
00:40:14.920The student that came into my office, for example, but because now all the universities in Ontario are research comprehensive universities, they don't focus on the undergraduates as much.
00:40:25.980And they try to compete with with all the other universities for research dollars, for grants and for things that don't necessarily benefit the undergrads.
00:40:36.860And I think that's to their detriment.
00:40:38.720So if you are looking at the paths in universities outside of medical school, law school, outside of certification or credential based programs, what is the role of an undergraduate university education in your view?
00:40:55.700I think it's to provide a wide range of practical skills, but not to train for a particular career.
00:41:03.720Like, I don't think you want universities to be turned into vocational institutions.
00:41:09.900And I think when you tell everybody that they have to go to university and the reason they have to go to university is because they'll be able to get a better job.
00:41:17.260That's exactly what you've done. And certainly some programs do lend themselves to practical employment.
00:41:22.300Some of the ones that you mentioned, but a general humanities, any of the humanities or social sciences.
00:41:29.460And I've got my degrees in history, so I can sort of speak to that.
00:41:34.620I don't think you want to tailor those to careers or to professions or even to the idea that this is something that can aid you to get a better job.
00:41:43.820You want those programs to be centered on learning and education and investing in academic matters.
00:41:53.740And so the humanities should be able to provide you with skills in writing, with skills in oral communication, with critical thinking skills.
00:42:04.840And by that, I mean the ability to look at a situation from multiple viewpoints, weigh the pros and the cons of each viewpoint and come to a sort of a synthesized conclusion about where you stand on that position based on the best evidence from multiple perspectives.
00:42:21.540And people who can do that can find employment in a whole host and range of professions, they can be entrepreneurs, they can be involved in corporate work, they can even mesh those skills with more technical, practical skills and mechanical processes.
00:42:43.180It's really limitless, and companies and people used to clamor for the skills that a humanities education could provide.
00:42:54.140But there's been certainly a transition in what the humanities offers, both in terms of its ideological roots, but also in terms of trying to turn these non-vocational, pardon me, these non-vocational disciplines into something that can provide particular career development opportunities for people.
00:43:17.700And I think the mixed signaling that students receive further confuses them and further frustrates them with the system when they're being told that these programs will provide them access to better jobs.
00:43:31.400And so they take on debt, and so they take on debt, and then when they get out into the marketplace, they realize that employers don't want the particular skills that they've been given, or in some cases indoctrinated into.
00:43:43.800And now they're on the hook for tens of thousands of dollars of debt, and they don't have very good employment prospects.
00:43:51.400So this really, it really does seem as if students are being placed at a disadvantage from multiple positions from the modern university, at least from my vantage point.
00:44:02.540And there was a great piece in Spiked that I think you tweeted out as well.
00:44:06.040The best place to learn about responsibility, self-respect, and duty, and about standing on your own two feet is in the workplace.
00:44:13.220And you had said that you had, you learned more about the real world in your job at 15 as a dishwasher than school taught you at that time.
00:44:25.500And, you know, I've been working continuously ever since in a whole range and host of odd jobs.
00:44:31.000And I worked part-time many hours in university as well to help provide for myself.
00:44:37.720And the price of education, I think, is really, and why that's gone up, I mean, there's many different theories.
00:44:46.400I would point to government interference, certainly in limiting the availability of new universities.
00:44:54.880When was the last, again, we'll just look at Ontario, where it's a highly regulated industry.
00:44:59.420When was the last time Ontario got a new university?
00:45:02.020You know, I think it was 50 years ago.
00:45:04.720Yeah, and in Canada, we don't have that industry of private colleges and universities like you have to somewhat of a greater extent in the U.S.
00:45:13.980Yes, and certainly there are pitfalls and dangers with a for-profit model, as you've seen with some schools in the United States.
00:45:20.700But that doesn't mean that there can also be beneficial and positive institutions that operate using that model as well.
00:45:27.800And I think that the limiting, we could just look at that as a way in which competition has been essentially eliminated for the universities in Canada, which gives them more of a captive consumer base, which means they can raise their prices in one sense.
00:45:45.860But also things like guaranteed loans for students help to drive up the price of tuition.
00:45:49.820And you see that really intensified in the United States.
00:45:52.720And we don't necessarily have quite that problem in Canada, although it is starting to creep up in terms of the increased cost of tuition and just a year's worth of resources at a university.
00:46:07.280And in that case, you used to be, you used to hear all the time of people working their way, you know, through university.
00:46:14.880So on one hand, you would be getting work experience and you would have your feet, you know, planted in the real world.
00:46:20.460But you'd also be able to invest yourself in the more esoteric and academic matters of the university.
00:46:26.660And now it seems as if students are being told they have to choose one or the other.
00:46:31.440And if you choose work, well, that means you're probably going to end up worse off in life is the message that you're being told.
00:46:44.860Like you want to throw yourself in and give everything that a university or experience everything that a university has to offer.
00:46:52.280And a lot of it is being focused on things outside of the classroom.
00:46:55.340If you just look at the way administrations advertise universities, the things that they point to.
00:47:01.980Again, for undergrads, they're being sold on all of these different things that they can experience.
00:47:07.880But at the same time, administrations are doing everything they can to minimize the effectiveness of undergraduate education by focusing all their attention on acquiring research grants, bringing in faculty who care more about research than teaching, eliminating full time faculty instead of part time contractual and adjunct faculty.
00:47:31.800You're seeing universities move away from providing solid tenured professors who will teach undergraduates and especially first and second years.
00:47:43.360And so in sometimes the most important courses, you know, those first and second year courses, students are coming in and being taught by people without secure jobs.
00:47:52.920And I'm not somebody who thinks that you are owed a secure job, but it's just sort of a it's very difficult as somebody who works from contract to contract myself.
00:48:01.680It's very difficult to place roots down in an institution and to feel loyal and to want to really work to the best of your ability to extend ties into the community and develop solid relationships that you can then utilize in the classroom.
00:48:17.640And instead, adjuncts are worried about how am I going to get my next contract and maybe they're working at two to three institutions.
00:48:25.280So they're splitting their time and the students, right, these vulnerable first and second year students, those who maybe they don't think they should be there in the first place.
00:48:35.520They're not being taught by people with the right expertise, acumen or even the stability to be able to transition and steer them through the very difficult first and second years of university.
00:48:48.920And as somebody who does teach first and second years and I actually I relish that opportunity because I know that these these students need a little bit of extra transition, I find that the high schools are not preparing them for the rigors and the demands that are necessary.
00:49:08.100And so there is a little bit of tactful coaching that some of the students really need in order to help them.
00:49:16.660And I don't think it's I try not to to place the blame so much on the individual students, so much on the the structures and systems and incentives that they've been that they've been especially.
00:49:29.900Yeah, they've been sold a bill of goods on this.
00:49:32.040I really do. And I wait until the students show me that they don't deserve that sort of benefit of the doubt because that's a life lesson you don't get in university either.
00:49:42.700Yeah. Once you get here, you're supposed to be an adult. And if you know and I give you a little bit of a grace period and you don't take advantage and you start to display disrespectful behaviors or contemptuous behaviors or simply just unserious behaviors when it comes to the gravity of the work that you should be doing, you know, you lose that benefit of the doubt as a student.
00:50:04.200And but at the same time, I want to be cognizant that these students, I think, are being set up in a lot of cases for failure by the system, both post-secondary and the secondary and elementary schools.
00:50:17.320And so I try I try to try to try to balance those competing incentives and those competing circumstances when it comes to the the group versus the individual, for sure.
00:50:28.800It's it's it's tough, but I tend to I tend to sympathize more of the students and come down harder on the adults who have created the situation for sure.
00:50:37.940Well, fascinating dialogue. And I think for everyone's sake, it's good that this student went to you for counsel instead of some of your colleagues, perhaps.
00:50:45.560Professor Jordan Goldstein, Sport Humanities Prof. You can follow him on Twitter at JB underscore underscore Goldstein.
00:50:52.920Jordan, thanks for coming on. Good to talk to you again.
00:50:55.220Yeah, great. It's always good to reconnect. And thanks a lot, Andrew. And good luck on the launching of your new podcast.
00:51:00.820I'm sure Canadians and those who are interested in the things you talk about are going to be really are going to really enjoy what you bring to the table.
00:51:08.140Well, you've earned yourself an invite back for that. Thanks a lot, Jordan.
00:51:11.340All right. Thanks so much. Have a great day, Andrew.
00:51:13.120Thanks. We'll be right back with more of The Andrew Lawton Show up next.
00:51:17.680You're tuned into The Andrew Lawton Show.
00:51:21.500That was Sport Humanities Professor Jordan Goldstein from Laurier University, the hotbed of the free speech fight in Canada, a fight on which he is very much on the right side.
00:51:32.020So my thanks to Jordan for coming on the show. My thanks to all of you for tuning into the show.
00:51:36.900We'll be back in a couple of days with more of The Andrew Lawton Show on True North.
00:51:41.220Thank you. God bless. And good day, Canada.
00:51:43.780Thanks for listening to The Andrew Lawton Show.
00:51:45.820Support the program by donating to True North at www.tnc.news.
00:51:51.060We'll be right back in a couple of days with more of The Andrew Lawton Show.
00:51:53.980Thanks for listening to The Andrew Lawton Show up next.