More on Island job prospects
Feb. 14th, 2004 09:36 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rfmcdonaldMy reply to Kerry's letter to The Guardian, here.
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Editor:
I enjoyed reading Lloyd Kerry's letter of the 7th, "We're not all flipping burgers." I empathize with Mr. Kerry's job woes, all the more so since I and my friends aren't taking degrees relatively irrelevant to the Island context like paleontology or aerospace engineering. We either have already earned or are in the process of earning, through hard work at UPEI, degrees in various fields which lend themselves well to work. We can write well; we can research in depth; we can present skillfully--we are, in short, well prepared for a 21st century work environment that demands the highest level of skill possible from workers.
Yet still, there's only the call centres hiring here. To say nothing of the fact that a friend of mine--a brilliant woman who got a MA in her field overseas--was told by career counsellors that she shouldn't put her degree on her resumes, since it would make potential employers think she's too well educated.
The only conclusion I can reach, based on my experience and that of my friends, is that the Island economy does not value education at all. More precisely, it would be accurate to say that the majority of sectors in the Island economy work this way. One singular exception, as Mr. Kerry points out, lies in federal government jobs, which employ 1% of the Island's population and some higher percentage (2 to 3?) of the Island's workforce. I'm skeptical, though, that conditions are as good for anything but a small minority of the remaining 95%+ of the Island's workforce.
And yes, I know that Prince Edward Island is a poor region by Canadian standards, and that even if the region began catching up, personal incomes will probably always be below the Canadian average for most of my working life. That's the problem: Atlantic Canada hasn't been catching up. In fact incomes have been stagnant at two-thirds of the Canadian average since the 1960s, this despite the fact that in the developed world, the trend has been for relatively poor regions and countries on the fringes of wealthy continental economies to catch up. The most spectacular case of this convergence is Ireland, which has managed almost overnight to become one of the wealthiest member-states of the European Union, but other countries--Portugal, Spain, Greece, Slovenia, shortly the incoming new member-states of the European Union--have either already caught up to Atlantic Canada already or have, in fact, surpassed Atlantic Canada. Here in North America, Québec has managed to close most of the gap separating it from the Canadian average, while New England--so close to us, in geography and in culture--is one of the richest areas of the United States.
The question of education is central for Prince Edward Island, just as it is for Atlantic Canada as a whole. Placing a high value on higher education was responsible for the success of so many countries and regions elsewhere in the developed world--it provided a skill base for economic development, and it halted decades-long trends of mass emigration. If Prince Edward Island continues to place as a low priority on education as it has, by contrast, the Island can hope for nothing more than a continued and managed decline, as more energetic and educated populations leave us in the dust just as they have for more than a century.
That's a shame, since Prince Edward Islanders--including the educated young of Prince Edward Island, hoping for a chance to contribute productively to their home province's life--deserve much better. It remains to be seen whether the powers that be will give education, and the educated, the position that they need in order to help fulfill our province's long-delayed promise.
I want to be hopeful for the future, I truly do. In the meantime, though, I'm going to be working and living in Upper Canada.
Randy McDonald
Kingston, Ontario
***
Editor:
I enjoyed reading Lloyd Kerry's letter of the 7th, "We're not all flipping burgers." I empathize with Mr. Kerry's job woes, all the more so since I and my friends aren't taking degrees relatively irrelevant to the Island context like paleontology or aerospace engineering. We either have already earned or are in the process of earning, through hard work at UPEI, degrees in various fields which lend themselves well to work. We can write well; we can research in depth; we can present skillfully--we are, in short, well prepared for a 21st century work environment that demands the highest level of skill possible from workers.
Yet still, there's only the call centres hiring here. To say nothing of the fact that a friend of mine--a brilliant woman who got a MA in her field overseas--was told by career counsellors that she shouldn't put her degree on her resumes, since it would make potential employers think she's too well educated.
The only conclusion I can reach, based on my experience and that of my friends, is that the Island economy does not value education at all. More precisely, it would be accurate to say that the majority of sectors in the Island economy work this way. One singular exception, as Mr. Kerry points out, lies in federal government jobs, which employ 1% of the Island's population and some higher percentage (2 to 3?) of the Island's workforce. I'm skeptical, though, that conditions are as good for anything but a small minority of the remaining 95%+ of the Island's workforce.
And yes, I know that Prince Edward Island is a poor region by Canadian standards, and that even if the region began catching up, personal incomes will probably always be below the Canadian average for most of my working life. That's the problem: Atlantic Canada hasn't been catching up. In fact incomes have been stagnant at two-thirds of the Canadian average since the 1960s, this despite the fact that in the developed world, the trend has been for relatively poor regions and countries on the fringes of wealthy continental economies to catch up. The most spectacular case of this convergence is Ireland, which has managed almost overnight to become one of the wealthiest member-states of the European Union, but other countries--Portugal, Spain, Greece, Slovenia, shortly the incoming new member-states of the European Union--have either already caught up to Atlantic Canada already or have, in fact, surpassed Atlantic Canada. Here in North America, Québec has managed to close most of the gap separating it from the Canadian average, while New England--so close to us, in geography and in culture--is one of the richest areas of the United States.
The question of education is central for Prince Edward Island, just as it is for Atlantic Canada as a whole. Placing a high value on higher education was responsible for the success of so many countries and regions elsewhere in the developed world--it provided a skill base for economic development, and it halted decades-long trends of mass emigration. If Prince Edward Island continues to place as a low priority on education as it has, by contrast, the Island can hope for nothing more than a continued and managed decline, as more energetic and educated populations leave us in the dust just as they have for more than a century.
That's a shame, since Prince Edward Islanders--including the educated young of Prince Edward Island, hoping for a chance to contribute productively to their home province's life--deserve much better. It remains to be seen whether the powers that be will give education, and the educated, the position that they need in order to help fulfill our province's long-delayed promise.
I want to be hopeful for the future, I truly do. In the meantime, though, I'm going to be working and living in Upper Canada.
Randy McDonald
Kingston, Ontario
