In Golf, it's called a mulligan...

In politics, it's a do-over.

The Graham government has just announced a working group to examine the future of post-secondary education in NB. All indications are that this working group is supposed to fix the PR nightmare left by the work of the last guys.

The working group will be led by NB PSE officials.
Rick Miner has not been invited back.
The polytechnic idea may soon perish thanks to the work of over 4,000 Facebookers, another 1,000 or so committed emailers, and a united Saint John community.

You Spin Me Right Round, Baby, Right Round

Two government lines, two different dates.

"Although these are only recommendations from an independent commission and final decisions haven't been made yet by our government, I am pleased that the report kept the students' interests as its central theme.."
- Minister Ed Doherty, from a September 7 GNB News Release

"Before meeting with the students, I want to meet with the university presidents, and I also want to meet with the community college stakeholders," he said. "There will be an opportunity in the future to meet with the student groups, but our top priority today is to meet with the stakeholders at the university."
- Premier Shawn Graham, quoted in the Telegraph Journal on
October 11

If students' interests are the central theme driving the reforms, wouldn't these students be considered key stakeholders?

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.