Colleges in Dire Financial Straits

[kaysixteen]

Another question, building upon something marshy has said, regarding the difficulty of getting into a teacher training program in Canada: just how hard is this to do, and then how hard is it for the accepted teacher student to successfully complete the program?  And is graduation from such a program the only way to become a ps teacher in Canada?  IOW, are there alternative ways an adult seeking to do a career change can get into the k12 teacher profession?   What about a PhD whose degree is in a field taught in hs-- could he enter teaching in Canada, and would a school ever hire him?

[marshwiggle]

Another question, building upon something marshy has said, regarding the difficulty of getting into a teacher training program in Canada: just how hard is this to do, and then how hard is it for the accepted teacher student to successfully complete the program?  And is graduation from such a program the only way to become a ps teacher in Canada?  IOW, are there alternative ways an adult seeking to do a career change can get into the k12 teacher profession?   What about a PhD whose degree is in a field taught in hs-- could he enter teaching in Canada, and would a school ever hire him?

Education is provincial, so I can't speak with certainty, but as far as I know, anyone needs teacher certification. (There may be exceptions for short term emergencies, but again I'm not 100% certain.) For someone with a degree, teacher's college is a year or two, and some courses can be taken online and part-time, so someone could do it before leaving their previous employment.

Teacher's college has its flaws, but there are plenty of people with PhDs who are horrible at teaching graduate students, so unleashing them on children is unthinkable. (Not to mention the fact that all of the crowd control/attendance monitoring, etc. required in public school would be completely foreign to academics across the board.)

[Ruralguy]

Not as foreign to this academic....

[kaysixteen]

Considering that Canada is physically huge, and has lots of scattered low population communities miles and miles from anywhere, is there a teacher shortage there, at least in places like this?   What, therefore, is done to get certified teachers to go to these places for work?  I am still not necessarily convinced that Canada somehow has  a very hard bar for admitting 18yos to teacher colleges, harder than here, but would be willing to be disabused of this notion?   Put perhaps differently, what is different about the k12 teacher profession there?

[marshwiggle]

Considering that Canada is physically huge, and has lots of scattered low population communities miles and miles from anywhere, is there a teacher shortage there, at least in places like this?   What, therefore, is done to get certified teachers to go to these places for work?  I am still not necessarily convinced that Canada somehow has  a very hard bar for admitting 18yos to teacher colleges, harder than here, but would be willing to be disabused of this notion?   Put perhaps differently, what is different about the k12 teacher profession there?

I remember from some years ago that actually Canada is more urbanized than the US, since there's a smaller portion of the population who don't live near a major centre. (Most of the truly remote places are completely uninhabited. Indigenous communities are a large portion of the small, isolated communities, and they usually want to get teachers from those communities.)

And 18 year olds can't go to teacher's college; they need a degree first.

ETA: Some programs are concurrent, so that in 5 or 6 years a student gets their education degree and another degreee.

[Mobius]

I looked up Ontario's requirements out of curiosity. Indigenous teachers do not need a bachelor's degree if they teach in a Primary-Junior division. They do need to complete a teacher education program.

[kaysixteen]

So lemme see if I get this correctly-- teachers college is a grad program, and no 18 year olds straight from hs go there, meaning that no 22yos straight from college head into a classroom as independent teachers?

Now one other question comes to mind-- how are ps teachers in Canada paid, and what is their social status?

[marshwiggle]

So lemme see if I get this correctly-- teachers college is a grad program, and no 18 year olds straight from hs go there, meaning that no 22yos straight from college head into a classroom as independent teachers?

Now one other question comes to mind-- how are ps teachers in Canada paid, and what is their social status?

An education degree is a BEd, so not a graduate program even though it's after another degree. However, teacher salaries are quite good, (as are salaries for most government jobs), and they have powerful unions and good benefits. So as long as someone doesn't mind all of the politics of the education bureaucracy and the union, it's a decent living. As for social status, most parents are reasonably happy with their own kids' teachers, although many might be less enthusiastic about some of the actions of the teachers' unions.

[spork]

If you want information about Canadian K-12 teacher licensing, start a different thread.

[TreadingLife]

If you would like to see some dizzying discount rate data by private institution, check this out. The data is from 2020, so use that context.
https://www.highereddatastories.com/2022/10/private-colleges-and-discount-2020.html

[dismalist]

If you would like to see some dizzying discount rate data by private institution, check this out. The data is from 2020, so use that context.
https://www.highereddatastories.com/2022/10/private-colleges-and-discount-2020.html

I must reiterate that discounting [financial aid] does not subtract from revenue, it adds to it. Discounts are given to students who would not otherwise attend the institution, either for being too poor or for being too smart.

Discounting is a solution, not a problem.

The article seems to fit into all business self-lamenting: Gee, I wish my selling prices were higher, or gee, I wish there were less competition!

[TreadingLife]

If you would like to see some dizzying discount rate data by private institution, check this out. The data is from 2020, so use that context.
https://www.highereddatastories.com/2022/10/private-colleges-and-discount-2020.html

I must reiterate that discounting [financial aid] does not subtract from revenue, it adds to it. Discounts are given to students who would not otherwise attend the institution, either for being too poor or for being too smart.

Discounting is a solution, not a problem.

The article seems to fit into all business self-lamenting: Gee, I wish my selling prices were higher, or gee, I wish there were less competition!

Discounting only adds to revenue if there is an increase in the number of students attending which offsets the loss in net tuition revenue per student. Otherwise, that institution's demand is so soft that they are practically begging students to attend, and while they have butts in seats, the net tuition revenue is falling. Since costs tend to increase over time (unless you are streamlining operations somehow, which has its own limits with the cost disease), for colleges in dire financial straits, increasing discount rates *are* a problem. Couple that with the fact that there are fewer college-bound students, means that many schools are getting less and less money per student, with the same labor and operational costs.

Ever-increasing discount rates are a bad sign for many schools. Further, if a school's discount rate is increasing and enrollments are still falling, then discounting clearly isn't the solution.

[dismalist]

If you would like to see some dizzying discount rate data by private institution, check this out. The data is from 2020, so use that context.
https://www.highereddatastories.com/2022/10/private-colleges-and-discount-2020.html

I must reiterate that discounting [financial aid] does not subtract from revenue, it adds to it. Discounts are given to students who would not otherwise attend the institution, either for being too poor or for being too smart.

Discounting is a solution, not a problem.

The article seems to fit into all business self-lamenting: Gee, I wish my selling prices were higher, or gee, I wish there were less competition!

Discounting only adds to revenue if there is an increase in the number of students attending which offsets the loss in net tuition revenue per student. Otherwise, that institution's demand is so soft that they are practically begging students to attend, and while they have butts in seats, the net tuition revenue is falling. Since costs tend to increase over time (unless you are streamlining operations somehow, which has its own limits with the cost disease), for colleges in dire financial straits, increasing discount rates *are* a problem. Couple that with the fact that there are fewer college-bound students, means that many schools are getting less and less money per student, with the same labor and operational costs.

Ever-increasing discount rates are a bad sign for many schools. Further, if a school's discount rate is increasing and enrollments are still falling, then discounting clearly isn't the solution.

Wrong, wrong, wrong! One must not assume that one can get the same number of students without price discrimination ["discounting"]. The suppliers, here colleges, are not stupid.

Ever increasing discount rates means prices are falling in the face of reduced demand. Fantastic for the customers, I think! Stopping price discrimination will reduce enrollments.

It's all a call for less competition, which in addition to being inefficient, is also illegal.

[mamselle]

Someone's addicted to supply-and-demand curves.

But I think my Econ 102 instructor,  who, back in the day, pointed out that while we'd learned them for 101 as a tool for static analysis, we'd need to expand our analytic repertoire beyond them, since they were less useful in analyzing more dynamic situations.

Something about, "If you've only got a hammer, everything looks like a nail," I believe...

M.

[dismalist]

Someone's addicted to supply-and-demand curves.

But I think my Econ 102 instructor,  who, back in the day, pointed out that while we'd learned them for 101 as a tool for static analysis, we'd need to expand our analytic repertoire beyond them, since they were less useful in analyzing more dynamic situations.

Something about, "If you've only got a hammer, everything looks like a nail," I believe...

M.

By all means, go dynamic!

I learned very early the difference between knowing the name of something, and knowing something.
--Richard Feynman