EDUCATION AND EXPERIENCE IN CANADIAN UNIVERSITIES

Анотація

Keep in mind: even at the height of the the baby-boom bulge, the biggest year-to-year growth
was 25.000. Canada responded by building new universities and filling them, with students and
faculty. Now, as the babies of that well-educated baby-boom generation – the echo boom– beat a
path to the postsecondary doorstep in record numbers, the faculty who taught their parents are
heading in the opposite direction, retiring in record numbers as well. In 1990, there were 532,000
full-time students enrolled in Canadian universities and 36,400 full-time faculty to teach them. This
fall? Virtually no change in the number of full-time faculty.
Two years ago, experts forecast that the Canadian university system was going to have to

accommodate a growth of 200,000 students by 2011. Now, those numbers look extremely conserva-
tive. As of this fall, Canadian universities have already absorbed half that growth, with an

enrolment of roughly 745,000 full-time undergrad and graduate students. The result, in many
places: a space squeeze of unprecedented proportions and a ratcheting up of entry grades as
competition goes through the roof. As one university president said to another at a recent gathering
in Toronto: “Let’s face it, there are some of us who wouldn’t get into university right now.”