Premier Doug Ford had choice words for students expressing concerns over recent cuts to the Ontario Student Assistance Program (OSAP) Tuesday, telling them to “not pick basket-weaving courses” and to invest in education that gives people in-demand jobs.
Speaking to reporters at Queen’s Park, Ford said he received “thousands of calls” from students over the long weekend, who expressed concerns about the province cutting the amount of grant money students can receive through OSAP.
“I mentioned to the students, you have to invest in your future, into in-demand jobs,” he said.
“You’re picking basket-weaving courses, and there’s not too many baskets being sold out there.”
As a late gen x/early millenial, I was told to get a college degree in STEM. I did that, and got an MS and PhD. I finished my doctorate in 2008 just in time for the housing market to crash and forced austerity via republican wars and george bush. I spent 3 years in a postdoctoral fellowship, effectively making $10 hourly based on hours I worked VS salary. After my fellowship, in 2011, I could NOT find a job in my field, because there were no jobs. I gave up and leveraged my education into a different field.
I ended up working for the state, in a position that has nothing to do with my education, and only requires a high school diploma. I make $30 an hour now. 13 years after I finished my fellowship and gave up, I started having STEM companies cold calling me to offer me positions because they saved my resume. Best part was being offered $30 hourly, which is what I already make in a position that doesn’t require post secondary education. Telling them not to bother me unless they were prepared to offer me $60 hourly felt fucking amazing.
The point to my rambling is that whatever is “in demand” could change at a moments notice for any reason. If you’re going to spend 4-10 years of your life learning a particular skill set in a particular field of study, you should at least enjoy yourself and feel enthusiastic about what you are studying.
I’m not a Canadian, but if I came across Doug Ford slowly dying on the street, I’d step the fuck over his body and keep walking.
but if I came across Doug Ford slowly dying on the street, I’d step the fuck over his body and keep walking.
+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1
As a mid-millennial I was told to get a college degree in STEM, I almost did that, I was set to graduate with a BS in Aeronautical Science in 2009, left college in 2008 because of the financial crisis, finished flight school and became a flight instructor, I’ve never made more than $30 an hour, I am now an advocate for violence.
Same. I fantasize about dark shit on a daily basis.
I was having trouble sleeping the night before last so I ended up fantasizing about rubbing a lamp and being given three wishes by a genie with Aladdin rules, “Rule #1, I can’t kill anybody, BLEEGH! ~so don’t ask~” so I wished for a microphone that addressed everyone in the world, that everyone regardless of the language they spoke would understand what I meant, and be magically compelled to obey any instructions I gave.
“Authoritarian dictators, kill yourselves. Child molesters, kill yourselves. Wealth hoarding billionaires, kill your families then kill yourselves.” I got about as far as “Anyone who works with nuclear weapons, dismantle them and destroy all documentation.” before I fell asleep.
I was told to take coding. Anyone know how in demand that is these days?
It’s not.
You’d be better off stepping around, he’s very fat
Exactly, and the in demand job of today is often the job with high competition and less work when you’re done training for it because a lot of people want an in demand career
Get rid of OSAP altogether. Make university free and fully taxpayer funded and introduce negative income tax for students.
If AI is going to be arbitrarily deleting a bunch of fields, the concept of “in-demand jobs” is pointless. “Basket weaving” type classes might sound silly to stupid conservatives today but might be exactly what makes an AI-based economy tick in a couple of years (eg., a linguistics and philosophy degree might be exactly what you need if you need to be able to effectively set up and debug an AI agent).
Not to mention of course that the point of a university education is not “jobs”, it is to have an educated citizenry that is the bedrock of any kind of democracy. Conservatives have never understood the point of education in the first place. Fuck 'em.
Get rid of OSAP altogether. Make university free and fully taxpayer funded and introduce negative income tax for students.
Unless you’re talking about “free for domestic students, even more exorbitant for international students” then your idea would never fly. Free tuition for the children of wealthy foreigners paid for by taxpayers? You’d be lucky to survive your first term in office after passing that.
Ontario domestic students’ higher education is heavily subsidized by international students paying ultra high tuition right now. If you took away that source of funding and had taxpayers pay the full brunt (even just for domestic tuition) you’d have a revolt and would be routed in the next election, with a conservative who would totally dismantle the system.
Make university free and fully taxpayer funded and introduce negative income tax for students
You know who promoted this idea for years? Bob Fucking Rae.
Then he was elected Premiere.
Then he was elected to federal politics.
If we get rid of all the basket weavers then where will we get baskets?
Oh right, from outside Ontario because Ford only acts in the interests of others.
What are those in-demand jobs Doug? Software eng was in-demand a few years ago when a shit ton of people went into CS for it. How’s that going now? If you’re not making any job guarantees, putting more of the burden of market failures on students is not the recipe for economic development you think it is.
Big demand for hash dealers, just have to know fractions.
He needed low skill labor and pushed for mass immigration to depress salaries. For a shortage caused by transitory inflation, that we all knew would subside with higher interest rates.
Canadians are cattle in our governments eyes.
Hey, can’t I just get a job the same way that Doug Ford did? BTW, what undergrad degree did he get?
PhD in Nepotism and corruption. A few electives in italian-Canadian popular sex acts.
A college diploma on “How to Become a Drug Dealer”?
I was told by a Lockheed recruiter to get a degree in basket weaving. They didn’t care what the degree was, it was just a requirement for the job I was already over qualified for.
Meh. Why would you even work for a company like Lockheed?
At the time it was great pay and a good entry into a career path at a facility that is still active today. No regerts though, I speed ran the career through contract work and moved to a different area.
No but it’s Lockheed. It’s an American company for one. And they do weapons, equipment and tools used to kill people.
That wasn’t a problem for me at the time. It was part of the reason for my lack of a degree.
No regerts.
Druggie just wants to pump out more cogs for his rich buddies’ machines.
Fuck Doug Ford.
I’ve seen enough people start to resent life bc they tried to shoe-horn themselves into a degree field they couldn’t understand and hated. College isn’t meant for that.
I think pushing kids straight outta high school into college is a mistake. Some may be ready for it but many would benefit from experiencing the world a bit, putting some money behind them, maturing at little bit.
I took college in my mid 20s and by then i was able to balance a social life and school life very well. Had I gone earlier I may have either burnt out or been distracted by parties and more social aspects of college.
Getting rid of grade 13 was a huge mistake. My kids are all taking gap years but getting a simple job for a year is not an option any more.
Agree completely. Wasted university because the party life hit hard.
Kids don’t party at universities as in the past, too much pressure and competition. Mental health is a huge problem, suicides are a huge problem. I’ve been teaching 25 years and I really worry about this generation.
“We don’t need thinking people. We need numbers on the chart to go up-up-up!”
I wonder how many foreign made woven baskets decorate the Ford home.
I bet a lot.
And no sticker-making business dreams. That’s his job!
In America we had to take a “physical education class” as freshmen.
And I shit you not, most people took “walking” a class that consisted of walking around campus.
So, I took “swimnastics” instead, and people gave me shit for taking a blowoff when the alternative was just walking around. Like, we couldn’t even take a weight lifting class or anything productive for the requirement. There was no option that fit curriculum that wasn’t bullshit.
But that wasn’t a degree program.
Probably because “physical education” is itself bullshit. It neither provides enough activity for the students who are already active and athletic, nor encourages the students who are not active to change their ways (in my experience, it does exactly the opposite). I was overjoyed to be able to drop it after my first year of high school.
Id say its a minimum amount of exercise in an h hour span. Workplaces should have it too.
I was overjoyed to be able to drop it after my first year of high school.
This was college…
Grown ass legal adults paying thousands of dollars, to walk around campus an hour a week.
Which is why I did the option that at least involved a pool
Phys ed is generally bullying and bodyshaming 101. It is a foundational pillar of society.
I’d say hes right, a useless degree should be discouraged, you’re not helping these kids by playing make believe.
Smart financially literate people tell their kids to get vocational degrees.
There’s no such thing as a viable degree. It’s a myth. You’re asking teenagers to look into a magic crystal ball and figure out what skill set is going to have any value at all in 5 years. Meanwhile the richest men and all the experts on Earth can’t tell you what’s going to be valuable in 5 months. If they want to go to a vocational school, send them to a vocational school. The market will be flooded by the time they graduate so they aren’t going to make good money. Don’t expect to actually get an apprenticeship either, you don’t even want to know how few of those there are to go around.
You may as well tell those kids to take $1000 to Vegas and hope they win enough for a down payment on a house.
The trades have been a good bet for the last 30 years and look to be so for the next while. Sure, no one knows with dead certainty but the odds that we are going to need tradespeople, nurses, doctors etc vastly outweighs the odds we’ll need someone with a major in critical literature.
That’s what they said about Coding for the last 20 years.
If you want a job, learn how to make friends, preferably in high places. You take a good look at who you have access to, and study whatever it is they tell you they need you to know to work for them, and if that’s underwater basket weaving, plumbing, or communications, you learn it, because who you know is how you get a job. What you know is how you keep it. Your competence means nothing. Your connections mean everything.
That’s a wild take. I’m pretty confident of most of the successful folks I know, that’s pretty untrue. The ones who work for the magnificent 7 knew no one in there beforehand. My engineering friends didn’t have connections, they had really good degrees and work ethics.
That’s what they said about Coding for the last 20 years.
And good coders aren’t hungry for work. They might have a harder time finding quarter million salaries these days but that’s a pretty good baseline.
Edit: Oh, for the lawyers, maybe sort of? There’s a lot of networking etc to try to find a firm with a good partner track etc but that happens midway through law school, and your competence is essential.
You know basket weaving is not a degree, right?
I see the people who agree with Fraud have never step foot in post secondary education.
I think hes using it facetiously to avoid openly disparaging an actual degree. The problem is government gives you the debt whether the degree gets you a job or not, a private company who has a chance at loss will do some due diligence as to whether they will be able to pay the loan back or not.
I’d say its an interference in the market that leads to a larger number of foolish young people getting bad degrees, and maybe its still better than the alternative, but it shouldnt be openly encouraged. Its a stupid thing to do and leads to suffering when you have no means of paying the loan back.
Probably not put super well but the basic idea is fairly reasonable. I graduated with folks who majored in stuff they really enjoyed (critical lit, history, philosophy) and then had a rude awakening when it turned there weren’t many businesses with a burning need for someone who could explain the significance of the battle of Hastings.
From the other side, I have a buddy who teaches a film course. According to him, if he assigns a movie as homework, only a quarter of the students will actually watch it. So he started failing kids. Well, the institution did not like that so now he legitimately shows movies in class for a huge chunk of his class time. I love movies and film fests but I feel less than ideal about subsidising a course on them and feel downright annoyed to subsidize kids sitting and watching fucking movies in class time.
Like I say, I don’t hate Ford’s basic thrust here.
Ford would be a better person with a liberal arts degree. His whole life has been a closed bubble of corruption and Nepotism from his father, and he literally knows nothing. I doubt he has ever read a book.
We have libraries for this.
The notion that we should pay tens of thousands of dollars for everyone to go and get an arts degree and then be basically unemployable is a ridiculous one though. (Remember, OSAPs are just pure grants, there’s no repayment, it’s just a gift.)
Lol agreed. In law spent years in uni getting a phych degree. Mad student debt now. Works at a bakery making bread. Had a budy also did some sort of bs social sciences program. He struggled for years after, until he lucked out, got a job driving go bus.
There’s a guy out there I met a while back he did a few traning seminars for a few hundred bucks from bosch on rebuilding diesel injectors. He makes a killing rebuilding injectors, injector pumps.
Guys go to welding school for a year, in 3-4 years they’ll probably be making close If not over 100k.
These Reddit myths about $100K trades really need to stop. Even if true, you physically cannot do that for 30 years.
Are you in the trades?
Maybe depends on the trade. I know a good few older plumbers, welders etc who at this point, don’t bother leaving home for anything under several thousand dollars (much to a friend’s vexation while trying to reno.) You don’t want to be a roofer for 30 years though.
Become a licenced mechanic (provincial govt pays for your school) and make over 100k. It’s a tough job though.
Over 100k. Bullshit. Most make $60K, $75K tops.
https://redsealrecruiting.com/salaries/welder-salaries-information/
Median is 83K. Throw on a combo and you’re golden. I have a friend who moved from welding to underwater welding and is laughing. Loves the job, never sweats about work, has all the OT he wants if he ever wants it etc. Not a brutal job, just requires attention and care.
You seem to be arguing for choosing a major with some job prospect, but Ford seems to be arguing for not taking any courses that aren’t directly beneficial to some economic purpose.
I disagree with Ford’s stance at least. As an old tech person, my non-tech uni courses were most beneficial to my overall capabilities in my tech job, at least in the long run. Creative writing, ethics, history, and tort law were things I took because they were interesting (to me at least). None of these had much relevance to tech as far as I could see, but I’ve been much better off for them.
Ford seems to be arguing for not taking any courses that aren’t directly beneficial to some economic purpose
I mean, if you read the article, it’s pretty clear the students understand he’s talking about programs as a whole. Heck, most economically viable majors require you to take courses to become a well rounded person.
I agree that people should expand their horizons but asking us to subsidize that, when there are a hundred open online courses freely available is a little silly. (And if you read my original comment, the notion that I’m helping pay for kids to watch movies in class because they refuse to do so as homework? Just gross.) Heck, my mom just finished a comparative religion course via Stanford online and had a blast.
Money is a limited resource. While there are many fascinating courses, and heck, I could spend a lifetime learning if someone was willing to pay the bill, if you’re asking society to pay for you to learn things, society is willing to do that as an investment in the future. While medieval history is fascinating, that’s not a great investment for the rest of us.
my non-tech uni courses were most beneficial to my overall capabilities in my tech job
Yes but I imagine, y’know, getting the tech skills, was pretty fundamental to getting the tech job. If you’d applied saying “I don’t know a thing about tech BUT I am a well rounded person” they would have laughed you out the door.
I’m no fan of ford but i don’t mind OSAP being prioritized for genuine in demand nation building career opportunities. Programs to get people into electrical engineering or other careers that will support our future could be beneficial. I doubt thats actually how this will all go down but as a concept prioritizing certain degrees over others with public funding isn’t the worst thing, especially if it can help build a stronger economy to open funding for more variety of programs later down the line.
The problem with Ford’s rant and the idiot basket weaver media who cover him is that because of a decade of underfunding, most of the programs he mentioned do not have space for a fraction of those applying. It is very difficult to get into engineering or health care programs at a good career level, not some bullshit Humber college program with the same name.
Sounds like you’re in favor of central planning
I view it similar to rebates and tax breaks. Like nudging people towards EVs with rebates or relieving the cost of having kids by offering tax breaks. The government sees the shift they want (electrification, increased birth rate) and the people have financial or other incentives to make those choices.
