Thank you. I'm honoured to be a witness for this committee.
I've been with the Universal Learning Institute for 25 years in a variety of roles. For me as a woman, a senior citizen, a full-time employee in the private post-secondary education field and as someone who is severely hearing-impaired, COVID-19 has had a significant impact on my sense of security and well-being and has had the same impact school-wide.
The women at ULI are local and international students, administrative staff and team members, and teachers. The senior team at ULI is female. As senior vice-president and as someone who has owned my own school in the past, I understand the entrepreneurial needs of the workplace. Today I will focus on the experience of our female constituency.
With COVID-19, many women were losing their part-time jobs or having hours cut, thus losing social connections and not always able to meet the technological requirements for studying or working from home. This has led to an assortment of issues for the businesses and for the individuals. The business of ULI lost expected revenue, and the students and staff were challenged to be resilient with all the changes and concerns coming at them at once. What follows are some of the insights from your guidelines.
I'm in the unique position of having designed, managed and experienced the difficult transition from face-to-face learning to online learning. I moved the entire school to work from home, 100%, as the school was required to shelter at home while we navigated this pandemic together. The greatest obstacles for students and staff were technology skills, the availability of appropriate equipment and child care responsibilities. It was a steep learning curve for employees, as they were not hired to teach or work online, and also for students, who did not sign up for online courses.
Classes and streaming were happening for students with and without the appropriate bandwidth, equipment or resources. This proved to be a great emotional stressor for both students and teachers, who struggled with technology and the use of new platforms, as well as the sudden loss of social interaction.
For many women, working and studying from home created conflict and tension. For example, classroom requirements were complicated by children at home needing a home computer for their own schooling, thus competing with the working mom and caregiver for limited computer resources, all at the same time.
Some places are crowded, with housemates requesting use of space or equipment in an interruptive manner. Balancing both home dynamics and the work and school requirements, plus the increase in domestic unpaid work, led to additional obstacles to completion of programs. Unpaid care work has increased with children out of school and with the heightened care needs of older persons, as well as domestic responsibilities. Those living with seniors were worried about spreading COVID-19 to their healthy loved ones. Those with children were worried about their cognitive and personal development if the children did not have the stimulation they needed. Add the loss of social interaction, and the formula for continued resilience is lessened and the potential for frustration is heightened.
The female international students seemed to carry a significant level of burden as their world of connections in Canada is small and their families are separated. Many of our domestic and international stakeholders are single parents, have satellite partners, live in crowded housing, live alone or, in the case of international students improving themselves, have children and family in their home country with less success in containment of COVID-19 than Canada has.
Luckily, in B.C. and Canada, we have many resources. We were able to post and advertise to give the mental health information readily to all and to create internal social and academic circles on Zoom and social media sites that seemed to assist in reducing some pressures and, most of all, in connecting students and staff to each other and creating new communities.
We had to address the needs of women whose power at home, or lack thereof, exacerbated the challenge of studying with a teacher who is driven by curriculum requirements, attendance feeds to regulators and a push to progress.
Many students fell behind due to the distractions at home. This was a hard cost to schools, as extra tutorials and classes were needed to ensure success, an additional expense during a time of declining revenue. This was based on very little new enrolment or withdrawals of expected enrolments—not a great formula for a strong bottom line.
We are grateful that some of the Canadian federal government programs such as CERB and CESB, rental assistance, wage subsidies and other programs have been and are very effective for the life of the business as well as the lives of our female students who lost jobs, financial stability, social security and support systems.
An important additional support was the federal government IRCC adjustment to allow us to teach international students with student visas online, which allowed the female students the freedom to continue in their path towards a credential, albeit it with a quickly changed methodology. It is hoped that this adjustment will be extended as needed to service local and overseas students as the pandemic cycle continues.
The value added to this policy is the opportunity to maintain revenue in an industry that, in education and at ULI, is a substantially female population in health care and in management. For wave two, the technology part could be easier with assistance for the cost and process of having the right number of computers per family or living situation, and in the school, as well as the right type of Internet bandwidth for classroom streaming, and computers, cameras and microphones.
The Canadian government has been most generous in helping Canadian students this summer. I anticipate it will ease the burden of managing the household as well as redirecting resources to equipment for family needs. Additional individual and business support for technology would be most helpful in the reduction of stress and anxiety with the second wave.
Currently, with the opening of the economy, many students are returning to their part-time jobs. We now know that the burden of financial pressures and social isolation can be handled and will be less frightening should there be a shutdown again. We all recognize the temporary nature a second time around.
The challenge of working or studying from home for a woman is daunting. When the second wave arrives, although parts of the transition will be easier, in some ways it will be a bigger challenge as people suffer from pandemic fatigue.
I see the government offering some credit relief programs such as tax breaks for equipment, as well as pandemic education to maintain the energy to stay safe at home. as well as reinforced education about social distancing, wearing a mask and appropriate pandemic behaviour, including balancing staying on track with every aspect of the lives of women.
A more level playing field between private and public post-secondary institutions is a policy aspect of the experience that could help our students stay on track, such as allowing the many students who qualify to come to Canada if they choose the path of a vocational school. This will include a look at the postgraduate work permit and spousal and family visas to help encourage students who have study visas to complete their studies if their families have an opportunity to come to Canada as well.
We just graduated a class of eight caregivers and 35 postgraduate nurses, all of whom had a variety of the personal challenges listed above. Most of the postgraduate nurses are currently still working, either in their co-op position or as sponsored employees across Canada in the health care field. Their personal journeys and stories are yet to be told as they watch their home countries being ravaged by COVID-19.