Pierre Canisius Kamanzi

La démocratisation de l'enseignement supérieur au Canada: la face cachée de la massification.

The increase in available student placements at colleges and universities, the implementation of provincial and federal postsecondary education policies, and the rise of the educational aspirations of families and individuals have all led to the massification of Canadian higher education. Based on Merles typology of the forms of democratization, this article attempts to revisit the theory of equality of opportunities by critically analyzing the link between massification of higher education and social equity. The results of an analysis of longitudinal data from the (YIT) Youth in Transition Survey show that at the age of 24 in 2008, approximately 77% of young Canadians have pursued studies in a college or university. If access to postsecondary education is now higher, to what extent has it improved social equity? The article shows, in light of the Merles typology, that mass university education is achieved in part under the seal of a segregative democratization, while college education tends to be egalitarian.

The Influence of PISA Scores, Schooling and Social Factors on Pathways to and within Higher Education in Canada.

In this article, we use data from the Canadian Youth in Transition Survey (YITS). This survey has followed longitudinally the Canadian Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) students originally surveyed in 2000. The aim of this article is to look to what extent social factors (e.g. gender, parental education and socio-economic status), previous schooling (secondary school grades, etc.), and particularly PISA scores, play a role in shaping pathways to and within higher education. We look at the influence of these factors on access to higher education (university or college), and persistence in terms of graduation or dropping out within higher education. We conclude that PISA literacy scores, schooling and social factors appear to have a much greater impact on access rather than on persistence within higher education. We discuss the implications of these findings for future research and educational policies in favour of participation and persistence.

The Development of the Québec Higher Education System

The development of the Quebec higher education system is fairly recent (Conseil superieur de l’education, 2003). Compared to some of the world’s oldest universities founded as early as the 11th century CE, 1 the first Quebec universities only opened their doors some 800 years later: McGill College – later to become McGill University – in 1821 and Universite Laval in 1852. At the beginning of the 1960s there were only six universities in Quebec.