Thank you.
The challenges are important, and they're not just challenges with regard to money, of course; they're also with regard to organization.
Let me give an example of an issue that doesn't seem to come up very much, but that certainly reflects our ability to produce graduates in universities and colleges. We lose about half of the students in the first and second year, but we don't know why we lose them. We don't know what constitutes success, why people get through and why people don't get through. We don't have a tracking system, even for the people who get into universities and colleges.
There's an example of an issue pointing to the need on a national basis for much better data and analysis about where we're succeeding and where we're not. Our main concern, which is why we consider the future uncertain for post-secondary education in Canada, is that on a national basis we don't do a good job of knowing where we're going and what's happening at the present time.
With respect to the funding issue, there are issues of access that are dependent on funding. What we find in our report is interesting. We mention that people from lower-income groups actually overestimate the cost of post-secondary education; it actually costs less than they think it does. That's interesting, because it speaks to the need for people to come from a milieu that has a learning culture. It speaks to the need to do something about the cost of post-secondary education and about support for students, but also to issues like graduation rates from high school. In societies in which graduation rates from high school, as in Canada, are not good enough, of course you get not necessarily a culture of learning, but a culture of dependence. I think that's one of the main issues we have to address as well.
There are many parts to the question, but I think the question of access is one that goes well beyond financing.