THE CANADIAN DREAM
Fireworks light up the night sky over Ottawa on Friday. As Canada marks its 149th birthday this weekend, we start a new series about the changing face of ‘the Canadian dream.’ What does that notion mean to a generation of millennials who have different id
Next month, Lee-Michael Pronko will hand in his master’s degree thesis in political science.
He had an eight-year journey through the post-secondary school system, studying photography for a year, followed by a double major in the humanities and philosophy, and a year of study in Belgium before he embarked on the master’s degree.
Along the way, Pronko, 28, collected more than $46,000 of student debt. He also discovered a passion for entrepreneurship and co-founded two companies that focus on urban design and civic technology that gets people involved in city planning decisions.
“There are opportunities — but you have to make your own,” says Pronko. “I finally found my passion and a way to channel it. But you have to be hungry.”
Pronko is a member of that generation known as millennials, a group primed from childhood to learn constantly, to embrace technology and eventually be the most affluent generation yet. But their ascent sputtered in 2008 along with the economy. For many millennials, that cohort arguably described as having graduated from high school sometime after 2000, the middle class has become a slippery slope.
For some, the Canadian dream (a term we are admittedly borrowing here from our southern neighbours) — that hard work will lead to success and the assurance that the next generation will always do better — is evaporating. For others, that dream has morphed into something different from the ladder of education-job-marriage-housechildren.
Pronko says he’s looking to create change, not follow a set path in life or a five-year plan to save money for a mortgage.
“I would feel like it’s a prison sentence if I were to live my life that way,” he says. “Things will happen when they’re supposed to. I operate in a more spontaneous but prepared way.”
Jean Gilles, 23, is a Carleton University computer science student who will be entering his sixth year of university this fall. He believes he “ended up getting lucky” when he chose computer science. He didn’t need to get a student loan until recently. There will always be jobs in information technology, he reasons.
He accepts that work might take him anywhere in the world. He grew up all over Quebec and Ontario, and expects he will someday be rooted somewhere. It will happen when it happens, he says.
“There’s no right and wrong, just experience,” he says. “It may be in Ottawa. It may be on Mars — if they have positions on Mars.”
It’s hard to say what the Canadian dream is today, says Jack Jedwab, the president of the Association for Canadian Studies. “I think we’re more modest in our expectations. It’s a dream that is more adapted to the 21st century than the postwar period,” he says.
By the standards of their parents and grandparents, millennials are hitting the landmarks of adulthood far later. They spend more time in school, and that means student debt.
Although half graduate with their first degree debt-free, thanks to generous parents, scholarships and hustle, the remainder will face paying back an average of about $27,000.
They are marrying later, if they marry at all. In 2011, three-quarters of 24- to 29-year-olds had never married, compared with 26 per cent in 1981. They will buy a house — or more likely, a condo — later than their parents. They have children later. In 2011, the average age of a first-time mother was 28.5 years, five years older than it was in the mid-1960s.
It used to be possible for a child from a blue-collar family to skip into the professional class by acquiring an education at very little cost. “Now you’re crawling and you can slip back very quickly,” says Nora Spinks, executive director of The Vanier Institute of the Family.
In the postwar era, one income was enough to provide food, shelter, clothing and education for a family with three or four children. By the ’80s, it took 1½ jobs to cover all the basics for a family with only two children. In the ’90s, it was two jobs and two children, Spinks says.
“One of the reasons why people are choosing not to marry is because they already have $25,000 in student debt, and they can’t afford a $20,000 party. Most 29-year-olds already have a toaster and a gravy boat. What they really need is cash.”
In 1980-81, about 10 per cent of high school graduates went on to university. Twenty-five years later, it’s about 30 per cent. That means that 35 years ago, today’s median student would not even be accepted into university, says and an expert in student aid.
“We’re competing with a lot more people than we used to. It’s globalization. It’s been a good thing for the bottom 80 per cent. But it has hit the middle class pretty hard.”
Graduates need more credentials to land a good job. It takes longer and costs more money to acquire credentials that are less valuable in the workplace. Ontario has cut admissions to teachers colleges in half and turned a year-long program into a two-year program, for example. But getting an education degree is hardly the ticket to a middle-class life with two months of summer holidays. In 2001, 70 per cent of teaching graduates found a regular job in the year following graduation. In 2012, it was 26 per cent.
While some young workers face greater opportunities, they all face greater risks because of fundamental changes in the nature of work and pay, and the decline of traditional sources of security such as employer pension plans, says University of Ottawa labour economist Miles Corak, who researches social and economic mobility.
Incomes are much more polarized. While some people are doing much better, others are slipping.
The sense of being part of the middle class is about more than income; it’s about having a sense of hope and progress, needing security and being treated fairly, he says. Even people who make considerable amounts of money feel they’re struggling because they don’t feel a sense of progress for themselves and don’t anticipate it for their children.
For some young workers, the future is rosy.
“If you have the right degree from the right university, and you also have a bit of luck, you will do much better than your parents,” Corak says.
And luck matters more than in the past. That includes being born into the right family that passes on the attitudes and aspirations for success, as well as a social network.
Research shows that family connections matter when it comes to getting a job and moving up, Corak says. People who are successful are able to do things that computers can’t — exhibit empathy, good judgment and the willingness and ability to develop relationships and thrive in teamwork. These are skills built in the family.
By some measures, young people are doing very well, says Jedwab. For those between ages 25 and 34, there is no substantial change in unemployment rates. Incomes haven’t dropped in real dollars — they have actually increased, he says. Interest rates have remained remarkably low.
The difference is the debt burden.
“We’re really a society that is much more indebted,” he says. “Financial security isn’t as strong. That means the transition to family is more delayed.”
By his own count, Pronko has had about 33 jobs over those years, from security guard and parking lot attendant to a current job working on a web renewal project for the federal government. In the past, if things got boring or there was no opportunity for growth, he would quit.
University has equipped him to write, to use logic, to analyze things quickly, Pronko says. But pragmatic skills have to be picked up outside academia.
“The economy is changed. You need diverse skill sets,” he says.
Every generation has its struggles. In the early ’80s, it was mortgage rates that hovered around 18 per cent. In the ’90s, it was tuition hikes.
There have been winners and losers in this economy. In 1991, 19 per cent of female workers between the ages of 25 and 34 had a university degree, according to Statistics Canada. By 2011, it was 40 per cent. Their young male counterparts haven’t risen nearly as well in 20 years — 17 per cent had degrees in 1991, and 27 per cent in 2011.
“One of the great things about Canada is that we have upward mobility,” says Higher Education Strategy Associates president Alex Usher. “People from lower-income families move up a notch or two. And some people are on the way down. Not everyone can be on the top income quintile. That’s good. It means we are not an entitled society.”
Pronko plans to pay off his debt in two to four years. Over the space of a lifetime, $45,000 shouldn’t weigh you down, he says. His goal is to “make myself sustainable,” to live a minimal lifestyle without feeling anxious about money. It would be great to have a family someday.
The set path of life perhaps seemed reasonable to his grandparents, who came to Canada from Poland, says Pronko.
“They came from a postwar mindset. It makes sense, in a way. But in my case, I want to be part of something much bigger than myself.”