The impediment that Polytechnics has experienced, as well as colleges, is a systemic bias in favour of one particular form of education and seeing it as superior to others. By that, I mean university education. And I'm not here to suggest a university education isn't a valuable education; of course it is.
I am here to say we have to be looking at all the available options. We need to be looking at what is complementary, what provides the kinds of skills and training that reflect the skill depths we have. Unfortunately, we are still living in a society and a culture where parents continue to say to their young people that they wish they'd go on to get a university degree, without recognizing that may just be the opening gambit with respect to being able to be properly trained and properly placed in the workforce.
One of the biggest issues is that systemic bias, which then has influenced key decision-makers of all governments, both political representatives as well as bureaucrats, because they come to it with a predisposition and with a lack of understanding of what the value is and what the value offer is in this type of education.
It's a challenge for people of my generation to be able to be more responsive to younger people and to recognize what they need to be properly employed and benefit from being in a very competitive economy.
The reason Humber and the other institutions I've mentioned in my opening remarks have been successful is that they have been at this for a while. These institutions really are leaders in their field. They are distinguished by the fact that they provide applied learning as well as applied research, meaning they have a laddered comprehensive offering that goes all the way from apprenticeship training right through in some cases to masters degrees, and they do applied research, so they have really completed the circle. Their students learn in the classroom and then they learn with industry, and they also conduct research, so they're helping industry solve problems at the same time they're learning.
When we talk about diffusing or being a knowledge-based economy, we are creating students who are trained to diffuse technology in the workforce. And Humber and BCIT and Conestoga and Seneca have been very good at that, because they've built those relationships with the private sector.