Post-secondary education is vital to Canada's future

Vancouver Sun Editorial

 

Students heading off to colleges and universities this month -- and their parents -- are naturally focused on the rising price of a post-secondary education.

 

So it's nice to see another study showing that pursuing an education after high school still represents a good investment.

 

The latest study by the C.D. Howe Institute confirms that irrespective of the intangible benefits of college life, based on a straight monetary calculation, the investment needed for university, college or trades, both in cash outlay and forgone earnings, pays off handsomely in higher lifetime earnings.

 

There are caveats and exceptions, of course. One worth further study is that women who pursue a trades education don't do significantly better than those with just a high school education.

 

Still, the overall finding is consistent with earlier data but is presented in a relatively recent context, which is that Canada is now home to a higher percentage of people aged 25 to 64 with post-secondary degrees from universities, colleges or trade schools than any other OECD country.

 

The C.D. Howe Institute asks rhetorically whether we now have oversaturated the market and diluted the value of such education, a question it answers in the negative by finding that the premium in earnings has not diminished.

 

Taking a wider view, we would go further, because although parents and college graduates are looking at personal returns from their investment in education, as a province and country we need to look at the social and economic payback for the billions of tax dollars we invest.

 

The individual returns are relatively easy to measure through the increase in lifetime earnings. The return on tax dollars is a little more subjective, but it still doesn't take long to build a compelling argument for maintaining our investment in post-secondary education.

 

It starts with where we want to compete in the global economy. We cannot compete with the developing world for jobs that depend on paying low wages and still maintain the standard of living and government services that Canadians expect.

 

That means having a better-educated workforce than our competition that can respond to changing technologies while driving innovation and increased productivity.

 

In the United States, which has seen its status as the world's best educated country slip away -- a recent report to Congress warned that the U.S. has now fallen to 12th among OECD nations among 25-to 34-year-olds -- our completion rate has become a benchmark for the kind of success needed to reverse not just the economic decline but also the social health of the country.

 

Indeed, the benefits of post-secondary education and a culture that supports lifelong learning go beyond the world of work.

 

One of the major challenges we face over the coming decades will be to meet increasing demands for health care.

 

We know also that one of the best indicators for population health is the level of education. Educated people tend to be more physically fit and less likely to smoke. So investing in education should lessen our need for expensive health care.

 

Education levels also correlate with lower rates of crime, participation in community life and charitable giving.

 

So in the competition for public dollars, we need to remember that education is more than an investment in individuals.

 

It is a direct path to achieving the country in which we can imagine we want to reside.