This text is part of the special Higher Education notebook
Despite the constant increase in the number of students attending Quebec CEGEPs and universities since the 1960s, inequalities remain. The work Higher education and social inequalities. Between public policies and educational pathways, published by Presses de l’Université du Québec last November, is a retrospective of research carried out on the subject by a group of interdisciplinary researchers. “It is the fruit of long-term work,” says co-author Annie Pilote, professor in the Faculty of Science at Laval University and dean of the Faculty of Graduate and Postdoctoral Studies.
“We want to understand academic pathways in higher education, their diversity, the factors that guide them,” describes Pierre Doray, principal researcher and professor in the Department of Sociology at UQAM. Through quantitative and qualitative analyses, the work examines the evolution of access to higher education in Quebec.
Higher education over the years
From the 1960s, the Quebec welfare state invested heavily in education, creating CEGEPs and the network of universities in Quebec, radically transforming the education system. “This is the starting point for a massification of post-secondary education,” says Mr. Doray.
Replacing elitist institutions, CEGEPs open their doors to everyone. “This ensured that people who could not go to seminary were able to go to CEGEP,” he continues. With a college diploma in hand, young adults have access to interesting jobs and the doors to universities open.
French Canadians, but especially French Canadian women, emerged as big winners from this massification: from CEGEP to the first university cycle, then to the second and to the doctorate, a growing proportion of women accessed higher education. Quebec university is today an important element of continuing education, while almost half of the students are adults (this is much more than elsewhere in the world). Decades later, the paths have diversified, note the authors.
“If we focus on subgroups, it reveals different realities. It’s not true that things are going well for everyone,” nuance Mme Pilot. Because “if there is indeed upward social mobility following the reform, the processes of social reproduction are also present. This is why we must not confuse massification and democratization of education,” we can read in the introduction to the work.
Additionally, policy changes beginning in the 1980s and 1990s opened the door to some privatization. “Policies that could be called neoliberal have been put in place,” continues Mr. Doray. Decrease in resources allocated to establishments, increase in tuition fees, great concern about efficiency and targets to be achieved; the change of direction of governments has had many consequences.
Several barriers
Results: establishments competing for students, and barriers that arrive even earlier. Competition between public and private sectors and the establishment of specific programs have had significant effects on access to CEGEP and, ultimately, to university. “The three-tier secondary school accentuates the disparities in access,” summarizes Mr. Doray.
Thus, even if tuition fees in Quebec remain the lowest in Canada, “the increase in fees has had negative effects on access to university,” underlines Mr. Doray. This thawing of tuition fees does not affect everyone in the same way, with adult students being particularly affected. All this while post-secondary studies are increasingly important for accessing the job market.
Despite everything, the number of enrollments in higher education continues to increase. “But perhaps the glasses through which we look at inequalities have changed,” suggests Mme Pilot. We are now interested in the success and perseverance of these enrolled students, and in the inclusion of traditionally neglected groups. “We look more closely at the mechanisms that reproduce inequalities,” she explains. This focused, among other things, on guidance counselors and student services, who surround students and who are not always equipped to support different groups, such as people with immigrant backgrounds or Indigenous people. “There are still many things to do, once we have given access,” she summarizes.
What future for the Quebec education system? “We need to talk to each other, and not just between experts. The last global reflection on the education system dates from the 1990s,” concludes Mr. Doray.
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