Study shows Northerners face barriers to post-secondary education
Media Release
For Immediate Release
North Bay, ON, July 12, 2018 – A new study published by researchers at Nipissing University finds evidence that individuals from the northernmost areas of Canada’s provinces continue to experience significant barriers on the road to attending post-secondary education.
The study, “Proximity, Prosperity, and Participation: Examining Access to Postsecondary Education among Youth in Canada’s Provincial North” published in Rural Sociology by Dr. David Zarifa, Dr. Darcy Hango, and Dr. Roger Pizarro Milian, used data from four waves of the Statistics Canada Youth in Transition Survey to explore differences in post-secondary education participation rates across geographical regions. In doing so, it found hard evidence of what many researchers and northern community leaders have long suspected: youth from southern, urban regions in Canada have a sizable advantage when it comes to accessing post-secondary education.
The lead author of the study, Dr. Zarifa, Canada Research Chair in Life Course Transitions in Northern and Rural Communities and Professor of Sociology at Nipissing, explains that a number of factors contribute to observed differences across regions: “First, you have an obvious geographical effect at play. For example, in Ontario, if you reside in the GTA, you are spoiled with many university and college options within a commuting distance. This picture changes markedly when you shift your attention north, where attending university or college often means completely uprooting yourself, and moving hours away from home.”
The study’s findings also indicate that much of the observed northern-southern gap in post-secondary education participation is explained by differences in the sociodemographic composition of these communities. As Dr. Zarifa explained: “Northern, rural residents are doubly disadvantaged. Not only do they reside far away from colleges and universities, but their sociodemographic profiles are characterized by lower incomes and lower parental education on average, along with a host of traits known to hamper post-secondary education participation.”
The study also uncovered northern-southern differences in educational trajectories. Most notably, youth from southern, urban regions were twice as likely as northern, rural counterparts to enter university first, rather than college. Dr. Pizarro Milian, co-author of the study and a Post-doctoral Researcher in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at Nipissing, explained that: “This pattern has important implications, given that university programs have traditionally been linked to higher incomes. As such, these differences may be a precursor to economic inequalities later in the life course.”
Dr. Zarifa and his team are examining additional disparities across Canadian regions as it relates to selecting educational programs, as well learning and workforce outcomes. Dr. Zarifa notes: “This type of large scale quantitative research is becoming easier to conduct given that Nipissing University now has its own Research Data Centre, providing local researchers access to a wide variety of the restricted versions of Statistics Canada data sets.”
The Life Course Transitions in Northern and Rural Communities research team is assembled by Dr. Zarifa and funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.
Updates on the team’s work and their latest findings can be accessed at: http://schoolworktransitions.nipissingu.ca
For more information please contact:
Meghan Venasse: 705-474-3450 ext 4615 or
Kelly Brown: 705-474-3450 ext 4494