Decades ago, Ontario’s colleges operated with a goal of improving local economies and regional communities. Now, Premier Doug Ford claims if you’re not in a highly-skilled field, the baskets you’re looking to weave are nowhere to be found.
With cuts to OSAP on the provincial level, and caps to student visas on the federal level, the mission of our colleges have seemed to have shifted towards keeping the lights on with as little investment as possible.
Host Maria Kestane speaks to Dr. Emilda Thavaratnam, an educator at Centennial College. She authored an article called Ontario’s colleges were founded to serve local and regional needs — have we forgotten that? The two discuss how the college system’s ethos has shifted from locally-driven to profit-yielding, and how the province’s most vulnerable are falling between the cracks.