More learnin' = more earnin'

Yes, this is a supposed truism "more learnin' = more earnin'" and stay-in-school advocates repeated point to statistics that show college graduates making more than high school graduates making more than drop-outs. Ignore issues such as whether or not a post-secondary degree guarantees you more money if you get a job in your field, for example, how many English Litt majors barely got by in publishing until they moved over to adsales? Regardless however, the fact remains the more education opens up more career opportunities and greater income. That's why we at Wenzel continue to shake our heads at the Alberta provincial government and their chronic underfunding of education at all levels. With recent reports in the Calgary Herald and the Calgary Sun that thousands of students will be turned away, not because of a lack of qualificatons, or ability to pay, but simply because there is not room for them we find it hard to believe that a province awash in oil money cannot afford to make a long-term commitment to education.

What makes this even more frustrating is when the education shortfall is presented in the context of a drastic labour shortage at all levels. Some have long argued that the conservative Klein government's undermining of education has been to help create a low-skilled blue collar workforce that believes in Klein's 'man of the people' facade. Keeping potential students out of post-secondary education can be viewed as an effort to divert more students to the labour shortage. Unfortunately, Alberta is short not just in burger flippers and oil roughnecks, but in doctors, engineers, and other skilled professionals and trades people, occupations that requirem access to a college, university or technical school.