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Peace Out Poverty highlights various aspects of poverty impacting the Alberta Capital Region community and what philanthropists in their 20s and 30s can do to take action.
INTRODUCTION
Hello! My name is Stephen Ryan, and this is Peace Out Poverty, the podcast that discusses social issues in the Alberta Capital Region and shows you how you can get involved.
Today, we are talking about access to Post-Secondary Education. We’ll hear from three organizations that are working to increase student access and success in the post-secondary sector and talk about some of the challenges they face.
Before we get too into the weeds, let me clarify some definitions. In this episode we will use the terms “college” “university” and “post-secondary” interchangeably to refer to education completed beyond high school. Our goal in this episode is to talk about the importance of any higher education, whether that is at a trade school, a traditional university, or a college; and also explore the challenges that exist pursuing any education after high school.
First things first, let’s talk about why this even matters. Why is it important to have more people, from more diverse backgrounds, be able to access and succeed in post-secondary education?
Well on an individual level, there are massive benefits. We can intuitively understand that society values higher education and in turn higher levels of education generally lead to higher levels of income. In Alberta, you can expect someone with a Bachelor’s degree or Apprenticeship certificate to earn $20,000-30,000 more per year than someone with a high school diploma. Over a 40-year career, this difference amounts to over a million dollars! This income premium goes hand in hand with being able to maintain a higher standard of living.
It also seems that formal education encourages folks to have a more complex vision of the world. They interact with people outside of their traditional communities and learn how to think critically.
There are also many more hidden benefits. For example, studies have shown that more education makes you live longer! Educated people also volunteer more, commit fewer crimes, smoke less and read to their children more. Seems like an all-in-one deal, right?
Well, there is also a knock-on effect with higher education. Parents with post-secondary education are more likely to have children who go on to university. Over time this effect stacks up, more people entering higher education today will lead to even more entering in the future!
There is also one more massive societal benefit to having a more educated population, taxes! That’s right, I did actually say taxes. Like we said before, people with a college education tend to make more money, which also means they pay more in taxes each year. In Canada, that means more money for healthcare, education, and critical public infrastructure like recreation centers, schools, and transit!
So, with all these benefits, why are all high school students not flocking to enroll? Well, the fact is there are systemic barriers for disadvantaged youth to enter post-secondary. We spoke to Amanda Harry from BGCBigs and Michaela Mann from USchool to talk about these barriers. First let’s hear from Amanda on some challenges the kids she works with face:
Amanda: My name is Amanda Harry and I am the Community Initiatives Manager for Boys and Girls Clubs Big Brothers Big Sisters of Edmonton and Area, which I'll refer to as BGCBigs after this.
Amanda: So BGCBigs is an organization that supports children, and youth ages 6 to 24 through a variety of programs in Edmonton throughout, throughout the Edmonton community.
Amanda: We provide mentoring in schools and in the community through our Big Brothers Big Sisters programs. We provide academic support programs in clubs and inner schools. We provide afterschool enrichment programs both in schools and in what we call our clubs, and food programs as well as youth employment opportunities.
Amanda: One thing I'll add about our programs is that they're all rooted in mentoring. And what we really focus on as an organization is that we provide safe places and spaces and positive relationships and opportunities for youth to grow, develop and thrive.
We asked Amanda about how poverty directly intersects with academic success, and the challenges that exist in lower income communities.
Amanda: We know that children and youth who live and attend schools and low income communities have lower graduates graduation rates than those who don't.
Amanda: Children and youth living in poverty face many challenges such as food insecurity, housing instability, transportation challenges, a lack of access to educational supports, and all of those things greatly contribute to a child’s ability to get to school every day. With all of those barriers in place, students living in poverty are more often more worried about survival for themselves, their families as opposed to attending school. Add on top of that youth who are newcomers to Canada or potentially identify as BIPOC, who are maybe just learning English, who don't really have knowledge of how Canadian school systems operate or how to operate successfully within them, there's a lot for individuals to overcome to be able to graduate.
Amanda: I would say lowing income communities and newcomer communities would be the most challenged when it comes to achieving that academic success. Based on our experience working within All in for youth. We are, as I said, centered in inner city schools, so that tends to be the population we see and work with the most.
Amanda: And it's really challenging because getting that high school diploma is just so important. And we know that the high school diploma is really what opens doors for individuals to achieve better jobs, higher wages, and really just access as a gateway to post-secondary education.
Amanda just mentioned All in for Youth. We've actually talked about this program before in our Access to Education episode last year, but as a quick refresher, through the collaboration of ten local partners, United Way's All in for Youth initiative offers multiple supports both in and out of school that help improve academic achievement, increase school and community engagement, and develop students' resilience to handle life’s challenges, providing essential support to meet the day-to-day needs of vulnerable students and their families
While we are moving into a post-pandemic world, the repercussions of COVID-19 are still being felt throughout society. Amanda has first-hand experience with the havoc COVID-19 wreaked on school systems.
Amanda: We're still learning the impacts of the pandemic and what impact it's had on all of our communities, let alone those who have faced poverty. But what I can tell you is the increase in demand for our type of support for families, children, and youth has increased dramatically through the pandemic. We are supporting more basic needs such as providing things like coats and boots for children and youth so they have those kind of basic needs more financial insecurity than we've ever ever encountered.
Amanda: Increased food support, supporting families through housing insecurity. When your sole focus is providing those basic needs, the academic support, the um, all of that kind of falls by the wayside. So, a lot of conversations that we've been having is, how are we supporting children and youth with the academic learning loss? How are we catching them up?
Amanda: How are we supporting them to, you know, increase their grade three reading levels because that's shown to be a critical point in graduation later on. How are we helping them? How are we helping support them through transitionary times like that, that movement from grade six to grade seven, that movement from grade nine to grade 10, those are critical transition times for kids where if they don't have that positive experience. We see how that can impact their graduation, dropout rates, all those different kinds of pieces. Covid 19 kind of exacerbated all of that. And kids weren't having the consistent support of schools and programs like ours that operate within schools to kind of help stabilize some of those, some of those pieces help provide those enrichment and academic supports.
Amanda also spoke about some of the ways BGC Bigs works to support children and youth with entering post-secondary
Amanda: BGC Bigs in partnership with All In for Youth supports children and youth from Kindergarten to grade 12 at eight inner city schools to provide wraparound supports, which really works to remove some of those barriers to learning so each school would have access to nutrition supports right in the school through an organization called E4C, they would have access to mental health supports through an organization called the Family Center. And then they get critical afterschool support or out of school support because we operate programs during spring break and summer to ensure consistency across the span of the child and use life.
Amanda: But, um, those critical hours support so that parents can go to work and they know that there's a safe space for their children after school with safe caring adults. It's addressing those needs so that they do have the capacity to focus on academic support. Because when you're not meeting those basic needs, when you are in that kind of survival mode.
It's impossible to think about your test the following week or, or something like that. And so addressing those critical supports through all in for youth is really one of the way that we're really working to address those challenges. I think that's just one example really of how we do it.
Amanda: I think the beauty of All In for Youth, and the reason that we do see so much success with it is because it is so embedded within the school, and it is complete wraparound support services for for children, youth and families, um, all working alongside educators, the school administrators, again, like there's, there's every piece of that project is critical.
Even with all these supports, finding the financial means to attend post-secondary is still often a challenge for the youth BGC Bigs works with. For reference the average yearly cost of post-secondary education in Alberta is $6,567, while the median pre-tax income is $42,500. Amanda tells us how BGC Bigs helps.
Amanda: We help support applications of scholarships. We have had so many incredible youth come through our programs where we have helped them in applying and identifying different scholarships, through a variety of different services such as, BGC Canada, where we've been able to support them in applying for scholarships that have been given them that ability to see like, oh, I can go to post-secondary this, this is within my means. Through the help of scholarships or grants. A lot of them don't even realize that there is those financial options available for them.
Amanda: I think that the criteria for grants and bursaries, it can be tricky and overwhelming for a student to navigate, and I say, I think that's the beauty of having our support staff there to help them identify those opportunities of, okay, so what are the pieces you need to do this and how can we provide you with those opportunities?
Amanda: We have teen volunteer programs. We have adult volunteer programs as well. Where they can come in and, you know, do those volunteer hours required for their program. Cuz a lot of programs nowadays also require volunteer hours or, you know, they can do the volunteering to then go out and apply for the grant or scholarship, bursary, whatever that may be.
Amanda: There's also a lot of scholarships and grants out there to serve our BIPOC community and we recently supported four youth from the high school that we operate within, in applying for a scholarship that awarded each student with $50,000 for post-secondary, so incredible opportunities through our organization, through our services and supports.
If you are fortunate enough to be in a position to help, Amanda also gave some great tips on the most impactful ways to do so.
Amanda: Yeah, I would say number one, volunteering organizations like ours survive on volunteers and so having volunteers being that person that is committed to one youth or one child and is the reason they come to school every day is so rewarding. So volunteer, please. Go to bgc bigs dot ca, sign up as a volunteer.
Amanda: And by funding programs like All In For You through United Way. United Way is able to work with organizations like ours and collaborate and fund and see those, identify those areas of critical need in a very unique way.
So as we heard, there are many challenges that youth face trying to attend post-secondary, but what about kids that never even think about university as an option? Our second guest, Michaela Mann from the University of Alberta U School program talks about the importance of exposing youth to the benefits of post-secondary early in life.
Michaela: My name is Michaela Mann. My pronouns are she/her, and I am the program lead for U School at the University of Alberta.
Michaela: So U School is a program that's run out of the University of Alberta Senate and it aims to introduce students to the life-changing possibilities that university offers. So we work with schools that are from Indigenous communities, schools in rural communities, and schools in the City of Edmonton that would most benefit from a program like this. The way we work with our classes and our students is that teachers apply to be part of the program in the spring, and each year we can take up to about 40 classes with two classes running most weeks throughout the year. We start working with the classes in September, so we start with a visit to their classroom in their schools to introduce them to university and U School, but also to get to know the group of kids a little bit better so we can plan the program accordingly.
Michaela: And then between September and May, each class is gonna come for a week long visit on campus. We usually have about two sessions a day that are delivered by volunteers on campus. Mostly they're professors or graduate students, but we do have also student groups or alumni coming in as well. And they present on a wide range of topics.
During their week-long USchool visit, each class takes part in a host of fun activities, each focused on a different field of study available at the U of A.
Michaela: To give you a sample of some of the sessions that the kids will experience, um, they might go and visit the observatory and look through some of the giant telescopes. They might go to the moot courtroom at the law center and argue a constitutional question. They could go up to our chemistry labs and squeeze fresh raspberries to make juice that they then use to make solar energy cells.
Michaela: Or we might head out to one of the fields and they can learn how to throw spears using atlatls with our Indigenous archeology team of presenters. So we really try and make each class visit specific to that classroom. And then at the end or towards the end of the year, we'll go out and visit them in their classroom at least one more time, and the students wrap up their U School year with us in June with a U School convocation at the Jubilee Auditorium.
Michaela also gave us some insight on why the program was started.
Michaela: The program is based off of some research that came out of the youth in transition survey that was completed in 2006. And the main goal of the program is really to address the barrier of exposure. So what I mean by that is that students from the demographics we work with often don't perceive university as a place for them.
Michaela: It's for other people, but not for them. And so we wanna combat that particular barrier by giving them a lot of exposure to university by getting them to start imagining all the different things that they can study, by getting them to walk across campus so they get a physical sense of just how many opportunities and how many things you could do at the U of A or any post-secondary.
Michaela: So we're trying to open doors to post-secondary by introducing it as an option early on for the students.
We asked Michaela about the importance of exposing children to post-secondary education and how that exposure intersects with poverty and academic success rates.
The program is based on some research that came out of the Youth in Transition Study. So that particular piece of research was a huge longitudinal, and cross-sectional study, of thousands of students both starting at age 15 and kind of 18 to 20, so there were two cohorts going through there. And they studied and followed up with these students up until their late twenties. And so with this research, they had a huge data set and they were trying to find out what were some of the factors that seemed to really play into students pursuing post-secondary. What were the factors around accessing post-secondary and persevering once they go into institutions like the University of Alberta? And one of the things, and this was really surprising to me, was that finances were not near the top or were not one of the major impacts on students accessing it.
Michaela: But that doesn't mean that it had no impact. So it was still important, but it was less significant than what I thought it would be. And what they focused on was that it was really more around aspirations and expectations of participating in post-secondary that had the biggest impact.
Michaela: So students who had a parent or guardian who believed that post-secondary was for that child. That child was more likely to pursue post-secondary. We also, they also found that peer influence was really significant for students perceiving post-secondary as an option for them. And so when the program was being designed these factors were at the heart of what the program was trying to do. So that's why we bring the entire class of students. We don't pick students out of classes to attend. We bring the whole class because in doing so, the students spend a whole year surrounded by peers with a teacher, all talking about university as an option for them in the future, and an exciting possibility.
Michaela: Another piece of information that came out of that study was over 50% of students had already decided if they were going or not by the time they started highschool. And the earlier they found that the students started at planning or pursuing post-secondary, the higher likelihood was that they would actually be successful in pursuing it and attending.
Michaela: And so we work with students in mostly grade four to nine. We do have some grade three classes, but we wanted to get the message to students earlier that post-secondary was something that they, they can imagine and start being planning for. So we work with them at a younger age, so they're set up to pursue post-secondary when they start high school.
Michaela: The research also shows that the earliest they found kids were starting to think about post-secondary was grade four. So kids are thinking about this really early, and so that was also an opportunity for us to start setting them up to imagine it as part of their future.
Michaela also had some stark information regarding the disparity in university attendance across family income levels.
Michaela: This big survey that I mentioned, the Youth in Transition Survey found that 31% of young people from the bottom quintile, so the lowest 20%, had attended university by the age of 19, which, so that's good it means they are attending. But when you compare that to those from the top, quartile, they're attending at 50%. So there's a pretty significant gap for the students in the bottom 20% compared to those at the top. And there's also a study that came out of Stats Canada in 2019 that found that youth from the lowest parental quintile with a university bachelor's degree earned an average of $52,000 five years after graduation compared to those without a post-secondary who earned about $19,000 or close to about $20,000, I guess. So we also see that education, it can be a barrier to access, but not accessing it also further perpetuates some of the poverty that they might experience.
Michaela: And so that was something else I wanted to capture. And so I think being able to expose them to this as an opportunity is really important and significant. Even if you're looking just at the financial component after post-secondary, of the doors it opens. But I think universities not limited to that. It also contributes to the community. It contributes to the university as well. We're bringing in different perspectives than historically we might not have seen. But we are also seeing more ideas starting to flourish, which is, I think, beneficial for everybody.
Michaela also had some excellent insight into how encouraging more children to enter post-secondary education stand to be a big benefit to society
Michaela: What we're finding with that answer is the students are acutely aware of the problems that we're facing in society. They're acutely aware of poverty and some of their answers, you can see that they have personal experience with it, but they're also aware of really big issues like climate change, forest fires, flooding. So they want to help, they want to be part of the solution, and they're extremely aware of what is going on. And so I think that highlights that ability and that potential that these students have at a really young age.
She also acknowledged that exposure is just one piece of the puzzle when it comes to the barriers preventing youth entering post-secondary.
Michaela: I think collaboration between programs is really important, especially for the students that we work with. We've seen in a lot of our schools that they provide additional supports beyond teaching the curriculum. Most schools do, but especially the schools we work with, we see a lot of those supports in the form of breakfasts, lunch programs, additional supports such as the All In for Youth program that the United Way does. And I think those programs are so important for our students. As I talk about U School, we talk about, I mentioned exposure, that we want them to view university as an option, but that's not the only barrier these students face.
Michaela: So there are barriers that are very, very acute and in the moment that need to be addressed. And so, for example, being able to eat and having the nutritious food that they need to learn is so important that no matter how much exposure we give them to university, if they can't learn because they haven't had enough food, it's not gonna be all that effective.
So far we have focused on children entering post-secondary. We have talked about the impact that living in poverty has on a child’s chances of enrolling and we have talked about how early exposure is key to getting more children viewing post-secondary as a viable option.
But what about once a student is enrolled? A college education is a rigorous undertaking, and successful enrolment is really just the first step. We spoke to Elaine Tran from the Student’s Association of MacEwan University to talk about some of the challenges current students are facing.
Elaine: My name's Elaine Tran. I use she/her pronouns, and I'm the VP student Life at the Students Association of MacEwan University better known as SAMU.
Elaine: So the Students Association of MacEwan University, or SAMU, like I mentioned, is a nonprofit organization that works independent from MacEwan University to support students.
Elaine: So our purpose is to create a vibrant student life and enrich the student experience. And we do through advocating for students both internally and externally, and offering a range of events, programs, and services to students.
Elaine also had an informative take on shifting the language we use to describe post-secondary students who may be struggling and gave us an overview of some of the programs that SAMU has in place to help
Elaine: I really learned that in the case of post-secondary students, we can shift our language from, you know, thinking about poverty to precarity, especially because it encompasses a diversity of experiences, precariousness does.
Elaine: So precariousness can include financial or socioeconomic challenges and instability like we discussed previously, but it can also include a range of additional factors that lead to both of those things. So that can include gender-based and sexual violence, mental health and illness, stigma, among a lot of other things.
Elaine: So I would say that when we think of poverty, we automatically think of social class and the different ways that class inhibits our ways to be successful. Um, but when I think about precariousness as a term, I envision it as, considering more the ways in which our experiences and the factors in our lives are intersectional.
Elaine: At SAMU at least, we have a number of different resources for students. So, every two weeks we have our breakfast club, which is, you know, for the days that you forget to eat breakfast, we provide breakfast for you, just in our building. We also have additional food supports. We have our campus food bank, which is called the Pantry for Students.
Elaine: Um, and they can access that online in like kind of an online shopping sphere. We also have a number of different student grants, um, bursaries. So we have, uh, SAMU Cares, which is an emergency fund that students can tap into if they need it. But the other thing is we also do a lot of advocating and lobbying to government for additional student supports, both provincially and federally.
Elaine: And last, but that one that I find that is not always talked about, but I find that is very impactful is student groups. We have a number of different clubs and student groups here on campus that you can find circles of support. You can find networks to be connected to, and you can find and create new friendships.
Next, we asked Elaine to elaborate on some of the challenges she sees students dealing with on a day-to-day basis. She started with an interesting thought on the duality that surrounds a post-secondary student in a state of precariousness.
You can be extremely grateful for the experiences you've had in post-secondary and the fact that you're able to further your education, but you can also be expressing, and acknowledging of the struggles and the challenges that you experience being a post-secondary student.
I also think that there should be, you know, increased funding or increased support for different support programs, whether that be food support, mental health support, overall taking into account the good health and wellbeing of students, I think is something that, can really help combat poverty, or combat that sense of precariousness that students will often find themselves in.
Elaine: It becomes difficult to focus on your schoolwork when you're living in a state of precariousness because there's so many other things that you have to contend with that are outside of the academics sphere.
Finally, like our other guests, Elaine spoke about the intersectionality of issues and why raising awareness is often the first step to resolution.
Elaine: Socioeconomic or financial instability is one of those things that can really greatly affect you, but there's also a lot of different other things that follow you outside of university, right? So things like the financial or socioeconomic instability, racism, gender discrimination, those kinds of things that unfortunately create conditions in life where we are not thriving, can come to affect us when we are in that process of entering post-secondary for the very first time.
Elaine: The other thing I would say, and the last thing I guess I'll say, is also supporting poverty reduction initiatives, in the community or on campus. So similar to, you know, the fact that we're having a conversation about poverty or precariousness today, is one way through supporting or making yourself more aware of the different challenges that exist in society that you might not be aware of, but also different programs and services like the ones offered by United Way.
CONCLUSION
I hope this episode has challenged how you think about post-secondary education. We believe it should really be looked at as a public good rather than an individual achievement. The post-secondary sector makes a significant contribution to Canada's social, cultural, and economic wellbeing. Having more people, from more diverse backgrounds, involved in this sector will lead to a better society for everyone.
I also hope we have shed some light on the challenges that exist within post-secondary institutions. Our society will only see the benefits of a more educated population if post-secondary students are able to access the supports they need to succeed and finish school.
This has been Peace Out Poverty. This episode was hosted by me, Stephen Ryan. Interviews were conducted by Renée Chan and Feven Worede. This episode was produced by Castria.
GenNEXT is a volunteer committee of United Way of the Alberta Capital Region. If you’d like to learn more or find out how you can be a part of the plan to end poverty, visit MyUnitedWay.ca.