Dad just came back from a meeting on the Island with about 70 other construction managers from throughout BC. Their big problem down south is a result of the Olympic building boom. A concern was a future shortage of qualified project managers and foreman, not so much the younger workers. There concern was more for the ten year horizon due to the retirement of existing project managers. This is not something that is solved overnight, and by the time we have trained the people we need the Olympic boom will be over.

My concern is when the Olympics are over will all the trades people have to leave the province once again to find work when we have another glut of tradesment like we did in the early 90's.

The problem is Canada-wide, not just BC and not just Alberta. That is what I love about Canada, so few people really know anything about the country.

The Olympics are not even a blip west of Alberta, if even that far away.

Do you remember how much an effect the Calgary Winter Olympics had on BC and the rest of Canada? Zilch. Drop in a bucket. Did wonders for those recreating in the mountains west of Calgary. The Vancouver Olympics will do wonders for those driving to Whistler for weekends.

http://www.careersintrades.ca/media/default.asp?load=faqs01

Now, we have this interesting situation here where CNC is supposed to be taking care of training and educating the very people that are needed for this skills shortage tht we are just seeing to front end of. We do not need people with a BA or even a BSc. We need people who have a manual skill along with some good brainpower and what I call "street smarts". I.E. practical people who are problem solvers and can get things done.

CNC has been derelict in its duties to this community and others by dropping the ball over the past 10 years and trying to compete with the University. They killed the very programs which are now required. To top it all off, the stats were there for those in post secondary education, just that no one, including he government, believed them.

Lately they have ads about going to CNC for the first two years of degree programs because they are cheaper than UNBC. What nonesense. Let the University do that. Perhaps provide programs for those who cannot make it inot the University and give them another chance to prove themselves. Other than that, get out of the game and put the effort into other programs.

They need some fresh blood on the Board. They need some fresh blood in administration, and likely some fresh blood in faculty as well.

UNBC and its quick success to one of the better small universities in Canada should be an incentive for CNC to do the same in more vocational oriented programs.

Owl in the early 90's I was in the CNC trades program for pre-app. Of the 16 people in my class only 3 went on to get their ticket, the rest faced moving out of town to find work and so went into other careers. The trades are an up and down industry and the biggest reason for the shortage today was the huge slow down in the 90's that saw anyone with a ticket move to Alberta to find work and not come back. If CNC had trained more trades people they would have been unemployeed or moved to Alberta. It is only the last couple of years where this situation has begun to change.

I can say from experience that CNC is a far better school than UNBC for the first couple of years in a degree program. The instuctors at CNC are there to teach, where as the instructors at UNBC are paid twice as much, but are focused on their own research and could care less about teaching.

I think there is room for both institutions in what they do best. CNC should continue what they were doing, but make a bigger effort on ramping up the trades program in light of the new demand.

Also the quality of instructors is far greater at CNC than UNBC. At UNBC they all seem to be career students with no real world experience, where as at CNC a lot of the instructors have had real world experience.

Chadermando. You make the same mistake most people make. The purpose of post secondary institutions is not to train or educate everyone for the local economy.

The purpose is to accommodate people in their community who wish to get an education.

Just think it through. If you were just out of high school and wanted to take a trades program or a two year diploma program for in a specific area but there were no jobs here for that type of graduate, you would have to move to the city which had job openings in that line of work and then get your education there.

Part of the idea of having education opportunities here is to allow people to stay here while they get educated, often at home for a cheaper rate than in another community.

CNC has one of only three places where one can take a dental Hygiene Diploma Program in BC - Victoria, Vancouver, Prince George. A degree program is available at UBC.

Obviously not everyone who takes the program here gets work here. Lots of students come here from other parts of the province. If we took your approach, and many do, CNC should be shutting the program down since the local market is saturated.

As most people know, mostly it is the other way around. People from here have to go somewhere else to get formal knowledge and skills. They may or may not return, even though there are jobs here for them. That is why the meds program was started here.

Northwest Community College in Terrace is churning out welders and the college was going to cut the program because everyone was going out of town to get jobs. Others in the community persuaded them to change their minds.

Educational Administrators and Boards who think that way need to find other jobs. They have no understanding of the global education system and its association with the mobility of the workforce. They may as well shut the doors, just as CNC has effectively done in many programs under Wenninger and Troschke could not even see that since he appears to have had little experience with such issues.

One other thing. University Instructors do not get twice as much pay as College instructors. There is a pecking order from Teaching Assistants to full Professors. The salaries are quite comparable.

BTW, none of them get anywhere near the salaries of technical professionals and managers at such companies as Canfor.

Finally, as far as "teaching" ability goes as related to real world experience, you must remember that University education objectives are quite different from that of a two year College program. University grads are much slower to be productive in a work situation than College Diploma students. However, after 3 to 5 years that typically turns around the other way due to the depth of knowledge difference.

As far as UT courses go, the two institutes are probably quite on par since the normal indicator of instructional quality is class size. I took Economics 100 in an auditorium of 500 students. Great introduction to the realities of a first year University setting. Neither UNBC nor CNC have anywhere near those numbers in their classes.

Intersting Factoid ... Ontario has 17 colleges which provide Dental Hygiene education at the Diploma level. Ontario has 3 time the population of BC, so really should only have 9 locations based on population.

BC simply does not provide the education opportunities for its population as some other provinces do. That has been one of my pet peeves for decades.

My understanding of UNBC Professors is that they were hired because they can write papers. No mention whether they can speak english or teach. Too bad for the students.

CNC on the otherhand has resisted dropping academic courses where numbers do not warrant and increasing trades where the demand is huge. I fault all of those who are more concerned about preserving their own jobs rather than meeting the needs of real marketplace demands. Chester