The paper received an email asking for a response to a few questions by July 25 for an article that will be up on J-Source, which is a collaboration of post-secondary journalism schools led by Ryerson, Laval and Carleton. It will be about whether student media represents the diversity of Canada.
The questions mainly had to do with the self-identification of the editorial board, our staff, on a number of different categories. These were based on gender, race with specific note to Indigenous people, disabilities and gender or sexual minorities. While they could have divided a few of these categories to be more specific, analysis of diversity in the workplace continues to be a positive endeavour that should be undertaken and explored more in-depth.
McMaster’s Employment Equity Working Committee released a new report on July 23 in a similar vein. It provides a detailed roadmap based on input from different parts of campus, e.g., each of the different faculties and research departments. The focus is primarily on “... a more complete understanding of representation of all four groups designated by the Federal Contractors Program: women; First Nations, Metis and Inuit (FNMI) peoples; persons with disabilities; and members of visible minorities, as well as the representation of trans and LGBTQ+ employees.”
The last recent example for this article will be a comment piece by the Public Editor over at The Varsity, which is the University of Toronto’s student newspaper. While a lot of it has to do with online commenting platforms, it transitions into the commitment the paper has, “... to diversity in its newsroom and reporting.” Their primary focus seems to be on gender and race.
These three examples from university campus media and McMaster have varying degrees of data collection and analysis, but all of them miss a few categories. While there are more categories of diversity, these three are, arguably, the most apparent ones missing.
The first is socioeconomic status. However, that would have less influence if you are considering only university student journalists or McMaster employees in your sample. The second would be ideologies, e.g., political beliefs and religious beliefs. I can understand not asking these respondents may not be comfortable answering accurately or answering at all, and may change at a more variable rate over time. The third is age.
While certainly not as attractive a stat, diversity in age should be deemed an importance if your goal is to represent the population in what you report about, who is reporting and the demographics of your employees.
University is always idealized as a place where you develop and grow. It is easy for anyone to note the differences between a first year and a fourth year and someone fresh out of university to someone about to go into retirement. When you are getting survey data or considering your workplace’s diversity, why would you ignore something as important as age?
It is simply too important. When it comes to reporting at The Silhouette, diversity and different perspectives have a significant influence on our articles in every section. The diversity of who is reporting it or who is being reported on is vital to allow a full representation of the McMaster student body, and to continue to progress and pass on information to the younger members of staff before graduating.
We cannot afford to ignore age. If other organizations or the university have missed the point by filling quotas instead of noting the benefits and embracing all types of diversity, including one as obvious as age, then that is disappointing.
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By: Arnav Agarwal
Despite having relatively easy access to education in Canada, we, as students, have found new reasons to complain: the work-load is intense, our schedules are packed between classes and homework, and weekends are far too short.
While some might think this sentiment is characteristic of midterm season alone, they would be surprised to learn where Canadian students stand on a global scale in terms of overall attitude to schooling. For a country whose government’s expenditure on education as a percentage of GDP stacked up to 5.2 per cent, ranking 49th among 132 listed countries, 37 per cent of school-going children indicated they do not like attending school and 58 per cent of students find school boring. This puts into question how effective the education system truly is at providing students a valuable and engaging learning experience.
Student tuition fees have never been a popular area with the Canadian student body, and understandably so. An increase of 26.6 per cent is evident in undergraduate tuition fees in less than ten years, comparing fees from 1999-2000 to those of 2005-06. The high dependence on OSAP, scholarships, bursaries and loans is quite understandable when one considers an educational expenditure for undergraduate studies having only grown from the $4,214 mark it stood at in 2005-06. Almost half of the college and university classes who graduated in 2000 owed money to government, non-government or both government and non-government sources, highlighting the financial burden the educational system places on a demographic that is largely still in the process of establishing itself.
While the holes are evident in the Canadian educational experience, the country has enjoyed numerous successes in funding an educational system which has demonstrated effectiveness in multiple aspects. In 2002 and 2003, total expenditures on education in Canada amounted to $6,667 per student, with approximately 5 million students were enrolled at elementary or secondary institutions and another 689,700 were enrolled in full-time or part-time post-secondary education nation-wide. The financial resource investment has sky-rocketed up, as Statistics Canada reported total expenditures per student averaging $31,103 on university education in a 2012 report, while expenditures stood at $11,489 for secondary education and at $10,758 for primary education in 2008-09. A growing investment into the student learning experience is clearly evident within the decade.
An assessment of educational qualifications placed Canada at the top of a list of twenty-one OECD countries in 2003, for percentage of working-age population between the ages of 25 and 64 who held a college or university degree: outdoing its neighbours to the south by 6 per cent, Canada having 44 per cent of its middle-aged population as credential-holders captures the success of the educational system in being easily-accessible and well-rounded. A study by Statistics Canada in 2004 further reinforced these notions, identifying 59.1 per cent of those aged between 25 to 54 in the country as being post-secondary certificate or university degree holders, 8.0 per cent as having been enrolled in some form of post-secondary education, 20.1 per cent as being high-school graduates, and only 12.9 per cent as having less than a high-school education.
A more recent assessment completed in 2009 yielded similar results, indicating 50.8 per cent of those aged 15 and over had attained some form of post-secondary education.
So, where does the Canadian educational system stand now? Student attitudes towards their education or the resources they have to utilize to gain access to it don’t seem extremely positive. However, increased investment in the educational system over the years, as well as positive nationwide population assessments over several years are indicative of a growing educational system and one that, despite having its shortcomings and being a work in progress, continues to enjoy its own successes.
