What is Canada's education?

Answer 1

The Place of Education in the Society

As an institutional form, education occupies a unique place in Canadian society. By the late 1960s, education had become a central legitimating institution in the modern Canadian state. Between 1960 and 1995 - 1996, the cost of public education increased from $1.7 billionto almost $60 billion. One in fourteen employed Canadians work in education, and 25 percent of the total population is involved with education. Public education is a major industry involving approximately 16,000 elementary and secondary schools, 200 postsecondary colleges, 75 universities and university colleges, 300,000 teachers, and 60,000 instructors and professors.

Relative to other developed countries, Canada invests a substantial amount on education. At all levels of education, Canadian expenditure per student is second highest (after the United States) among the G-7 countries (the other G-7 members being France, Italy, Germany, Japan, and the United Kingdom) and is substantially above the OECD average. Canada's educational expenditureof 7 percent of gross domestic product is the highest level among the G-7 countries and is one of the highest in the OECD. Eighty percent of Canada's adult population has completed upper-secondary (referred to as high school in North America) or postsecondary education. This is much higher than the OECD average of 64 percent. Fifty-two percent of the adult population has completed postsecondary education. This rate is the highest in the OECD and double the OECD average. Yet it should be noted that this ranking is due to the very high proportion of the population that is enrolled in nonuniversity postsecondary education.

By the mid-1990s, Canadian governments had created a mass postsecondary system. With a participation rate of more than 40 percent for eighteen-to twenty-one-year-olds, Canada ranked first among OECD nations. The system can be characterized as soft federalism. While the federal government has since the 1950s shouldered a significant portion of the bill for universities, constitutionally the responsibility has remained with the provinces. The level of institutional autonomy enjoyed by universities is probably more pronounced in Canada than in any other OECD country. The public monopoly over the binary structure (colleges and universities) accounts for the limited competition and the perceived equivalence among credentials across the country. This state public system is relatively homogeneousand, as a vestigeof its roots in the United Kingdom and France, is still committed to the ethosof liberal education rather than vocationalism

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