Daily Bulletin

Funds for one building project, anyway

David Johnston, Dianne Cunningham, and WLU president Bob Rosehart at yesterday's news conference

It was Kitchener-Waterloo's turn for an announcement of grants from the province's SuperBuild fund, which is providing $660 million for college and university construction to help cope with expected enrolment increases over the next few years.

"We're thrilled," said UW president David Johnston after Cunningham announced that SuperBuild will provide the requested grant for the proposed Centre for Environmental and Information Technologies and three related smaller projects.

UW had also asked for money to help with a proposed $7 million "learning centre" to be shared by Renison College and St. Jerome's University, with possible involvement of the other church colleges. The province said no to that project.

For WLU, the news was a grant to pay for library renovations and an expansion to the Peters Building, home of the school of business and economics.

SuperBuild news releases UW news bureau Ministry of training, colleges and universities Council of Ontario Universities Ontario Confederation of University Faculty Associations University of Guelph

The minister didn't go into much detail about the CEIT project in her speech -- which called the SuperBuild grants "a remarkable capital investment" and asserted that "we have a post-secondary system that is second to none in the world, but there is still work ahead of us."

UW provost Jim Kalbfleisch said after the news conference that the government has promised to provide $31,210,000 for the building project. That's less than the $34,675,000 that had been requested; to make up the difference, the government will turn over the money right away and let UW earn interest on it until the construction bill has to be paid.

In addition, the provost said, UW has to find $13 million in private sector construction funding and about $13.5 million to provide a "maintenance endowment" to look after the new building.

In his remarks thanking the minister yesterday afternoon, Johnston pointed out that "This in fact is the second time we've been awarded money by Queen's Park for this project." The New Democratic Party government of the province promised $25.2 million for it in 1994, but that grant was cancelled in 1996 shortly after Mike Harris's Progressive Conservatives came to power. At that time the building was billed as a Centre for Environmental Science and Engineering.

The project has four parts

Said a statement from Johnston: "It will reinforce some of Waterloo's strengths and concentrate more expertise in these areas of study than anywhere else in the country. It will build a bridge, figuratively speaking, over the mathematics, engineering, science and environmental studies faculties, and several other key departments across campus. This will allow an opportunity to put these disciplines together."

There will be a separate, smaller building (43,000 square feet) to provide a new home for the co-operative education and career services department, which now occupies cramped quarters in Needles Hall. Also part of the project are additions to Engineering III and the Engineering Lecture Hall (a new level of classrooms on top of the "submarine").

In all, the new space will contain 20 classrooms and 44 laboratories. It is officially intended to make room for 2,600 new students at UW, including some who have already arrived under the Access to Opportunities enrolment expansion program.

David Churchill, director of technical services for the plant operations department, said there will be intense work over the next few months to revise the construction plans for CEIT (which was then the CESE) as developed six years ago by architect Stephen Teeple, other architectural firms and a UW user committee. At that time the emphasis of the building was on "water" and the environment. As a result, some of the planned wet labs have to be redesigned as computer labs, Churchill said.

He said construction work might be able to start late this fall.

Minister hints at more money

"With the amount of money that we had available, we were able to support 38 projects," said Cunningham, noting that more than 100 proposals came from colleges and universities across the province. She said the Conestoga proposal was "extremely competitive" but didn't make the cut.

But she hinted that more money may be coming to post-secondary education in the new fiscal year, which starts April 1. And this time, she said, the emphasis may be on renovations and "deferred maintenance" for deteriorating college and university buildings, in contrast to the SuperBuild emphasis on new buildings.

"Deferred maintenance is a big challenge," she said at yesterday's news conference in the Davis Centre. "We may in fact see another injection, based on pressure and on the priorities of the government."

Yesterday's event brought smiles on all sides and many compliments for Cunningham, as well as for Waterloo's Member of Provincial Parliament, health minister Elizabeth Witmer. Cunningham and Witmer, in turn, said good things about UW, WLU and post-secondary education in general.

Being able to announce big grants "reminds many of us why we got involved in education", said Cunningham, who chaired London's board of education before entering provincial politics. "We must invest in Ontario's infrastructure," she added, "if we are to meet the challenges of a growing and changing world."

She repeated the frequent promise that the government will make sure there is "a place in Ontario's post-secondary education for every willing and qualified student".

Students can peek at job rankings

Other notes today and for the weekend:

Two rental events are coming to the Humanities Theatre. Today, again, it's the Potato People with their kids' show "Spud Trek" at 10:00 and 11:15. Saturday at 2 p.m., it's the "Let's Dance Showcase".

Michael Hudgens of the department of biostatistics at Emory University will give a seminar today in UW's department of statistics and actuarial science. He'll speak at 3:30 p.m. (Math and Computer room 5136) on "HIV, Competing Risks, and Interval Censoring".

The basketball Warriors are still alive in league playoffs -- the women's team, that is (the men's team was finally eliminated Wednesday night with a loss to Brock). The women Warriors will host Guelph's Gryphons on Saturday at 2 p..m in the Physical Activities Complex. It's a quarter-final game in Ontario University Athletics; the winner will play in the OUA finals at McMaster next week. UW swimmers, meanwhile, are at Guelph this weekend for the national championships.

At a less exalted level of sport, tomorrow brings the Hagey Bonspiel, in which a few dozen staff, faculty, retirees and miscellaneous ringers will take to the ice of the Ayr Curling Club and party afterwards. Monday will bring some good stories and a few muscles that are good and sore, I'll predict.

Also Monday, it's back to the classroom as the two-day break for engineering and math and the week-long break for other faculties becomes no more than a memory.

What StatsCan said about education -- from a Statistics Canada release on Monday

In 1990, 20% of people aged 25 to 29 in Canada had less than high school education. By 1998, that percentage had dropped to 13%. Also, between 1990 and 1998, the percentage of individuals in this age group who had university degrees rose from 17% to 26%.

Internationally, among member nations of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), Canada had the highest percentage of the population (48%) with postsecondary education in 1995, compared with the OECD average of 23%.

Population projections show that in the next 10 to 15 years, the number of young people aged 19 and under is expected to decrease in the Atlantic provinces, Quebec, Manitoba, Saskatchewan, and Yukon, lowering the demand for elementary and secondary educational services in these jurisdictions. The school-age population is expected to grow in Ontario, Alberta, British Columbia and the Northwest Territories, increasing the demand for education.

A concern in the next 10 years will be the replacement of retiring teaching staff. Close to one-half of full-time university faculty and about 40% of college staff will be eligible for retirement. However, given the large growth in the number of graduate degrees, particularly at the doctoral level, there would appear to be a large replacement pool from which to hire faculty.

When it comes to success in the labour market, it pays to stay in school. With each increased level of education attained, employment rates rise and unemployment rates fall. Data on recent postsecondary graduates show their earnings increase progressively with more advanced postsecondary qualifications.

Postsecondary graduates during the 1990s have had slightly more difficulty than their predecessors in making the transition from school to work. Just over two-thirds of 1995 postsecondary graduates -- university, college and trade/vocational -- were employed full time by 1997, two years after graduation. Rates of full-time employment two years after graduation were higher among the 1986 class, particularly among college graduates (four-fifths working full time) and university graduates (three-quarters working full time).

Among graduates working full time two years after graduation, 1995 graduates at all levels had earnings about 4% to 6% lower (in constant dollars) than those of 1986 graduates.

In 1997, only half of 1995 graduates who were working full time reported that their current job was closely related to their program of study. The fit between education and work was highest among graduates of colleges and trade/vocational schools, not surprising given the specific occupational orientation of many of these programs.

There is also a relationship between an individual's educational attainment and the socio-economic status (SES) of parents. In 1994, about one-third of persons aged 18-21 from low SES backgrounds had not completed high school, compared with one-quarter of those from higher SES backgrounds. Between 1986 and 1994, while university participation rates rose for people from all SES backgrounds, the increase was smallest for those from low SES backgrounds.

Canada's investment in education is among the highest in the world, as measured by OECD indicators of education expenditure.

Per student expenditures on education in Canada, from both public and private sources, amounted to US$6,396 in 1995, the most recent year for which internationally comparable data are available. This was second only to the United States at US$7,905. The OECD average was US$4,717.

In 1995, Canada spent 7.0% of GDP on education, the highest among the G-7 countries. The OECD average was 5.6%, while the United States recorded 6.7%, the second highest level.

About half of 1995 postsecondary graduates borrowed from student loan programs to finance their education, unchanged from the class of 1986. However 1995 graduates who borrowed accumulated larger debt loads, and were paying them off over a longer period. Two years after graduation, their average debt load was $8,300, twice the amount owed by 1986 graduates (in constant dollars).

CAR

Editor of the Daily Bulletin: Chris Redmond
Information and Public Affairs, University of Waterloo
credmond@uwaterloo.ca | (519) 888-4567 ext. 3004
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