Aren't they worried about the wrong set of student numbers?

Saint Johners are still feeling mighty raw at Rick Miner's idea to close down UNBSJ, and letters, faxes and emails are putting a fair bit of pressure on government MLAs.

Amidst government's desire for transformative change in education, however, they may be focussing on the wrong set of numbers (or no numbers at all, in the case of Miner's report). In 2005/06, according to GNB's own education statistics, local school districts 6 and 8 saw over 220 kids drop out.

Just this Spring, UNBSJ saw over 422 of its students graduate. While this is a fine achievement, a comparison to the number above suggests that in its drive for self-sufficiency, the province is looking at the wrong institution to reform. For every 2 graduates UNBSJ produces, Greater Saint John still turns out 1 high school dropout.

According to the last census, a high school drop-out in SJ earns slightly more than $18,ooo. A university graduate earns more than $45,000. All of this suggests that perhaps we need to radically overhaul our high schools, and not our institutions of higher learning.

But to do this, we'd actually need to have government officials look at numbers for a change.