Thank you, Chair, and thank you to the witnesses for being here today to help us with our assignment of what the federal government might do to promote apprenticeship and streamline it.
Having been involved since I was elected in 2008 with many of the universities in Canada through our post-secondary education caucus and travelling around the country, I'm noticing that there is a shift going on, definitely a shift, from the silo thinking of universities and institutions to an opening up in understanding the skill sets graduates need as they leave their education, as they achieve their degree or their diploma.
I'm wondering in Algonquin's case, Mr. MacDonald, whether or not you are aligning it all with any other universities or post-secondary institutions to do things in a concurrent way to assess that there is value in an undergraduate liberal arts degree, which it seems our generation had put as paramount when we tell our kids, “Go get an education”.
In my case, my three kids had to go to a community college to do exactly what you said, which was to become employable. They had their liberal arts degrees, but they weren't employable.
The situation today is that I think post-secondary is recognizing this. I think they're getting it in some ways, perhaps not fast enough for some of us. They're facing a lot of barriers, particularly in their own faculties in academia, who don't philosophically agree with that direction. What are your experiences at Algonquin?