Colleges Ontario

Mark McNeil
The Hamilton Spectator
Feb 10, 2009

Enrolment is up by more than 6 per cent but Mohawk College president Rob MacIsaac believes more has to be done to convince parents about the value of a college education for their children.

Yesterday, Colleges Ontario launched a $2.5-million advertising campaign to try to better sell the benefits of a college education to young people, and more importantly, their parents.

The campaign, involving television, newspaper, Internet and radio ads, as well as transit shelter posters and more, comes at a time when enrolment at the province's 24 public colleges is up by 5.6 per cent. And with the economy in a downturn, the colleges saw a 10 per cent spike in applications to programs that started in January.

MacIsaac says January numbers jumped at Mohawk because "we're definitely seeing a higher interest in our programs as the economy worsens." Mohawk's target increase for 2009-10 is 3.9 per cent.

He says the higher numbers are a reflection of "people in the workforce being dislocated" rather than young people continuing out of high school.

It's high school students that the campaign is aimed at, says Linda Franklin, CEO of Colleges Ontario. And while the economy is in a low ebb with job shortages, she says, a few years from now the reverse is expected to be true, with not enough people with the skills needed to fill the jobs that are available.

She says 50 per cent of high school students currently go on to post-secondary education. But the labour market is expected to need 75 per cent of them to develop employable skills through college and university programs.

MacIsaac says the campaign is especially intended to deal with a bias by parents against colleges in favour of universities.

"I think to some extent the baby boom generation has a notion that universities are better than colleges and therefore my kid should go to university," he said.

"I think we at Mohawk would say, Mohawk College is perfect for certain people and you should try to decide where your kid is on the spectrum. Moreover, we see a lot of kids go to university and then come to college when they want to get a job."