When I mentioned that I was going to weigh in on the economy, the people around me guffawed a bit and Dieter actually went as far as to bring in a stunningly mind numbing report from the Bank of Canada, which I am sure everyone else wants to read, called the "Monetary Policy Report Summary" for October 2008.
My interest in the economy is actually more focused on how it is likely to affect graduate students and hence graduate programs. (So if you want to know more about the economy, you need to find and read that report on your own!) Clearly as the economy slows down, recesses, falters, etc. there are going to be fewer jobs and less money. This combination has a material effect on graduate programs in a couple of ways.
First, people who lose a job or see advancement possibilities wane may want to/need to upgrade qualifications or retrain. This opens up opportunities, such as graduate diplomas for special marketable areas, interdisciplinary masters programs that are flexible enough to satisfy the educational needs of mature students, distance programs, etc. Second, when there are fewer jobs, history indicates that more students stay in school for graduate work. My business friends would tell me that the lost opportunity cost for the additional education at that point is lower than when it is easy to get a good paying job. Net result, we can expect more interest in graduate programs, both of the variety we have and of varieties we do not yet have.
At the same time, it may be harder for students to borrow money, harder to find part time work, and harder to get scholarships and bursaries. Let me discuss that last point. Most universities rely on endowments to support many of their internal scholarship programs. The yield is generally set at some conservative percentage but the dollars in the fund are tanking and so ultimately the number of dollars and hence the number of scholarships will be affected. Meanwhile donors, like the rest of us, may become more careful with their discretionary spending and so may take a wait-and-see attitude to donations. Governments are cutting back and so the prospects for new scholarship funds are not looking good and we have to hope that the ones we have do not take a cutback.
So that is just one more reason why I care about the economy!!
What can we do? No idea really but at the very least we need to think creatively about our educational offerings and make the best possible use of the scholarship and bursary money that we do have.
Off to Washington next week, to talk about international joint degrees.
Carolyn
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