In the past decade, there has been considerable debate about access to post-secondary education. This debate has focused primarily on the extent to which individuals from low-income families are able to access post-secondary education. In this section, we argue that we should also be asking whether further education is accessible to individuals who return to school later in life. In Section 5.2, we use the Adult Education and Training survey to investigate how many adults return to post-secondary education and to analyze how participation differs across key characteristics such as age, gender, and geography.23 Section 5.3 addresses barriers to participation and examines what post-secondary institutions are currently doing to encourage participation. Section 5.4 takes a closer look at federal and provincial financial aid programs which are aimed at addressing the cost of post-secondary education, one of the most significant barriers to participation. Section 5.5 provides a summary of key findings.
In this section we use mainly the Adult Education and Training Survey (2003) to determine how many individuals and what types of individuals return to a post-secondary program later in life. Table 5.1 indicates the proportion of adults aged 25-54 who participated in a post-secondary program in 2002.24 There is only slight variation in participation rates across provinces. British Columbia has the highest rate at 8.5 percent and Nova Scotia has the lowest rate at 5.0 percent.
| Alberta | BC | NS | Ontario | Québec | Total | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Learners | 83,290 | 124,285 | 16,591 | 341,881 | 168,302 | 816,015 |
| Adults without a university degree25 |
1,146,772 | 1,458,946 | 330,545 | 4,100,153 | 2,687,659 | 10,970,026 |
| Learners as a % of the target population | 7.3 | 8.5 | 5.0 | 8.3 | 6.3 | 7.4 |
Source: Authors’ calculations using The Adult Education and Training Survey (2003)
23 Statistics Canada’s Enhanced Student Information System (ESIS) is
potentially the most detailed source of information about post-secondary students;
however, this dataset is still under development and several of the most important
variables for this analysis are not yet well reported.
24 In the 2003 version of the Statistics Canada Adult Education and Training
Survey, only individuals 25-years-of-age and older are surveyed. While somewhat
arbitrary, the cut-off point of 25-years-of-age is used as a marker to distinguish
individuals who are pursuing post-secondary as part of their initial education
from individuals who are pursuing ‘second-chance’ post-secondary.
25 We have excluded individuals who already have a university degree at the
time of the survey. Ideally, we would also have excluded individuals with a
college diploma, but the data do not allow us to distinguish between individuals
with ‘some postsecondary’ and those who have obtained a college
diploma. Therefore, our analysis may slightly over-estimate the proportion of
learners who belong to our target population of interest (individuals without
a post-secondary credential).