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Last week, some media reports questioned whether too many students are being admitted to university in Quebec. The answer is clear: the problem is not that too many students are attending university but rather that too few are doing so.

In 2005, the percentage of Quebecers (in the current university-age cohort) who obtained a Bachelor’s degree was 30.2%, compared to 36% in OECD countries. In many jurisdictions, university education at the undergraduate level is growing at a fast pace, but Quebec is lagging behind. For example, Ontario’s attendance rate was 38% in 2004.

Advanced societies have no choice but to invest in university education because their future depends on having highly qualified people who can meet the challenges of a knowledge society. Between 1990 and 2002, the total number of jobs in Québec rose 14.4%, while the number of jobs requiring a university degree jumped 67%. As a community, we cannot build a prosperous future by relying primarily on precarious manufacturing jobs, which are adversely affected by economic imperatives that are beyond our control.

Quality in education is the very essence of the universities’ mission. Can universities improve the quality of their teaching? The answer will always be yes. Students are the reason universities exist and on-going effort is required to ensure that knowledge is developed and conveyed under optimum conditions. This is what the heads of Quebec’s universities and their communities strive to achieve every day.

The universities regularly review the relevance of the courses they offer and revise their evaluation procedures. They do so to ensure that their students receive a high quality education and are prepared to take their places in a labour market that is constantly evolving as knowledge advances.

Our universities have not lowered their standards but they have dedicated significant effort and resources to supporting their students. The investment in improved student counselling has resulted in marked improvement in the number of graduates in recent years. How would our institutions of higher learning be judged if many students left without obtaining the degree for which they had worked so hard?

Graduates who have earned Bachelor’s degrees and their employers have confirmed their satisfaction with the education received. A survey by the Ministry of Education has revealed that 82% of those who graduate with a Bachelor’s degree and who have a full-time job in a field related to their education, have a positive perception about their education two years after entering the labour market. Even better, 94.7% of the employers of university graduates were satisfied or very satisfied with the graduates they had hired.

The quality of Quebec’s university system is also corroborated by the number of prestigious awards given to the universities, their teachers and their graduates. There are so many examples that it would be an enormous task to acknowledge all the universities, and especially all of the students who are outstanding in so many ways. It should be noted, however, that Quebec attracts nearly one third of the international students in Canada, which is additional proof of the quality of our universities.

Conclusion

Quebec can be proud of its diverse and high-performing university education and research system. There are top-notch institutions throughout Quebec, each with its own personality; they include research-intensive universities that are among the best in Canada and that are known worldwide.

Quebec has progressed at an unprecedented rate over the past fifty years and this is certainly, in large part, because of the contribution of our universities. But it is important to look behind this collective success and understand that at every graduation ceremony, Quebec’s universities celebrate with students and their families the personal successes and individual achievements represented by each and every degree awarded.

We must use all the means available to us to make the highest forms of knowledge and culture available to anyone who has the desire and the aptitude to learn.

Heather Munroe-Blum
President, Conference of Rectors and Principals of Quebec Universities