Brad C

Where I live (Alberta) there is a lot of concern about whether institutions are serving the needs of Albertan learners. This has been true as long as I've worked in post-secondary, and it was true when I was briefly on the government-side a decade ago. Yet every single year, with every single new request, there isn't a standard definition of what is a “Alberta learner.”

Consider four different students;

1) A student born in Calgary, who went to high school in Calgary, then applied to the UofC, and subsequently went to the UofC.

2) A student born in Calgary, who graduated from high school in Calgary, and whose parents moved to Ontario in the summer after grade 12 despite their kid being accepted to the UofC.

3) A student born in Oshawa, who went to high school in Oshawa, and who moved to Calgary after grade 12 to live with a sibling for a few years before attending the UofC.

4) A 35 year old learner who graduated from high school in Fort McMurray, but hasn't set foot in the province for 15 before taking a course at Athabasca University, which leads to transferring to the UofC to do a degree.

Which one of these students is “from” Alberta?

Just the first student? All four?

For as much time is spent discussing whether institutions are meeting the needs of Alberta learners, there's basically 0 discussion about who is considered to be an “Alberta learner.” It gets weirder when you see institutions advertised as ways to boost regional economies and as a way to attract/retain people to live outside of major cities. Programs are expanded or contracted based on whether they are perceived to be benefiting the provincial economy, with no attention paid to whether students are coming from Okotoks or Fredericton. So are they supposed to help Alberta? Or Alberta learners? When do you become an Alberta learner? When do you stop being an Alberta learner?

I want to be clear, I don't think any of this is bad, I'm an annoyingly vocal advocate for the transformative power of post-secondary on personal, municipal, and even national levels. The country is better off when people leave their hometowns. Colleges, polytechnics, and universities are incredible investments even when you come at it strictly from a “dollars invested vs dollars returned” perspective. I just think it's weird that discussions about universities are always framed as-if they can only recruit within the provincial borders when we clearly know that isn't the case. This is example of how institutions are advertised as doing one thing, while being paid and operated to do another, and there isn't any discussion about why that is.