Province should explore creation of polytechnical institute

The Greene report trains its neo-thatcherite sights on many things, in some instances with admirable precision but is often vague and lazy in its focus.

One surprising missed target, and overlooked opportunity on a number of fronts, is the technical training arena. This includes the College of the North Atlantic (CNA), the Marine Institute and the rather mysterious cluster of private colleges. The oversight on non-university based learning is perhaps unsurprising given the patrician nature of the report and its author.

In other provinces technical career-focused training is going from strength to strength. In many instances, what were technical high schools have morphed into colleges and now many of these have been transformed into polytechnic institutes, offering advanced degrees and undertaking leadingedge applied research. This transformation is in response to the growing global labourmarket demand for highly sophisticated technical skills and the large number of underemployed university graduates seeking career-focused programs. In many cases over half the applicants to polytechnics and institutes have university credentials.

In Newfoundland and Labrador, the Marine Institute — a polytechnic by any other name — has kept up with global trends, perhaps one of the reasons that only 50 per cent of their revenue now comes from the provincial budget, as compared to MUN’S take of around 80 per cent. Unfortunately the “dry” terrestrial side of the public technical training infrastructure has atrophied and lags behind other provinces by a considerable margin.

There is no doubt the traditional trades training provided by colleges is well regarded and has served this and other provinces well; where would Alberta have been if it hadn’t been for the tradesmen and women trained in Newfoundland and Labrador?

SLOW PROGRESSION

However although traditional trades continue to be in demand, they are increasingly less “core” to technical training programming and exponentially more sophisticated as machine learning and automation plays a growing role in tradecraft.

The issue for Newfoundland and Labrador, with the exception of a few small boutique programs, is the training available hasn’t progressed much since the colleges were trade high schools.

Where, for example, are the programs in green technology, electric vehicle development and maintenance, artificial intelligence, machine learning and robotics, to name but a few? Where is the applied research that links entrepreneurs to product development? Where are the dual qualification programs? Where are the programs targeted at providing careeroriented technical training to undergraduate degree holders?

Not only is programming out of pace with the world “up along,” the extent to which technical and career education is integrated into communities is also problematic. In other provinces high schools, technical institutes and entrepreneurial development centres, together with university extension centres, are often co-located, conjoined and comanaged to great effect and have been repurposed to play their part in revitalizing regions through a combination of leading-edge technology training, applied research and innovation. This is the case in Nova Scotia, where a major reset of its career-technical sector took place in the early 2000s.

FEEDBACK LACKING

We have heard from MUN extensively on the post-secondary review and the Greene report but nary a word from the technical training sector nor the government (CNA is a government department to all intents and purposes), a very worrying silence indeed given the potential technical training and applied research offers to rejig and shift the economy to a trajectory that will put the province on a positive tack.

My sense is that there are a number of reasons for the absence of comment, most of them political. But one major factor seems to be there is no expertise available to decision makers that would provide an understanding of the state of post-secondary education nationally and globally and point out just how far behind we have fallen and why it’s essential to the future of the province to invest in a revitalized and redirected technical training and innovation sector.

One potential route forward is the creation of a polytechnic institute, which speculatively would encompass CNA, the Marine Institute, and (potentially) elements of programming from MUN.

In order to move swiftly in this direction, the political manipulation of post-secondary education in the province must end and independent governance be enacted; this recommendation has been made by both Dame Moya Greene and the post-secondary education review, acting independently and with very different remits.

One wonders whether the lack of any response whatsoever from the career education and training sector to both reports has to do with the very lack of independence that these reports highlight.