Trump Apparently Idolizes Hitler

Now I know why. Here's a bit on the writer, Tony Keller.

"Originally from Montreal, he’s a graduate of Duke University and Yale Law School and has also been a visiting fellow at the University of Toronto Faculty of Law and the Wilson Center in Washington D.C."

I smelled Harvard. I was wrong --- just a little bit. Sure, Tony. The whole hospitality industry and its various components are just "easy." All they have to know is how to serve you promptly and politely, right?

 

Well, it's not exactly like Canada --- but yeah. I was wrong big-time. Thanks.

 

I'm open to the possibility that many private career school programs shouldn't admit visa students.

I think there are good institutions in parts of that market that should be allowed to. e.g., niche areas of STEM, commercial flight training, freestanding arts conservatories (including newer arts like animation and music production), and maybe also some blue and pink collar careers in high need in the country (e.g., personal support workers).

 

Yet there are hundreds of career colleges on the Designated Learning Institutions list:
Designated learning institutions list - Canada.ca
Considering how poorly regulated these places are, I can see how this can look like poor administration and abuse. At least in US, unaccredited schools on the SEVIS list are a loophole and an exception.
In general, I feel like a large portion of career colleges as they operate now are rip-offs. I see value in eg. a one-year Massage Therapist programs, or something like Mothercraft College of Early Childhood Education - in both cases, preparing for a regulated occupation with an external standard. Rest of them are preying on vulnerable people. The immigration aspect makes it worse. It gives me the same vibes as claim preparer outfits we KNEW were no good but couldn't so much as say "you can prepare your claim yourself" to a taxpayer. Ottawa can be disappointing.

 

Ottawa? Disappointing? Impossible!

 

Justin? Disappointing? Um. Yeah. Sure. I guess so.

 

I'll go further and say PCCs shouldn't exist at all. I don't know what the situation looks like right now, but when I was in undergrad you could pay $4,000 a year to attend a public college or $10,000 to attend a PCC. You'll get subpar education (often being given a textbook and then expected to read it, with no lecturing.) At the end of a year you'll graduate and find your credential being ignored by employers.

For a more direct comparison, if you earned a Community Service Worker (CSW) diploma from Trios College in Whitby (near Durham College where I attended), you weren't eligible for registration with the Ontario College of Social Workers and Social Service Workers (OCSWSSW). The placements, critical to securing long-term employment, were mostly in daycare. The most coveted was the one placement available at Children's Aid. Meanwhile, hundreds Social Service Worker (SSW) students could get placements at Children's Aid, crisis lines, hospice agencies and other places that actually used their skills.

PCCs are popular with retraining programs because you can start them quickly, but there's lots of stories about how they aren't serving their students: https://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/students-at-ontarios-private-colleges-not-finding-jobs-provincial-numbers-show/article30117401/ Here's a 2016 article.

 

I am a very big fan of student visas though.

 

Let's hear you say that on a subzero morning with a foot of snow on Rideau Street, waiting for the plow.

Actually I like the place. Nice city. The ByWard market is cool. I almost bought a guitar there about 48 years ago. Then again, I've been known to do that just about anywhere...

 

You're tellin' it like it is, Dustin.

 

Most of that I'm OK with, Jonathan. As far as personal support workers go: those are overwhelmingly minimum wage jobs. We can say they shouldn't be - but they are. No wonder there's a high need. Who wants the job, at the going rate? Certainly, nobody, immigrant or not, should pay huge bucks for such a course. The payback is NOT THERE.

 

Yes. I agree with your post totally. Every word of it.

 

I took training in the same blue-collar trade subject at both an Ontario community college and an Ontario private career college. This private career college wasn't the most typical of the category. It was operated and I expect owned by one experienced instructor of the trade who delivered all training personally and much of it one-on-one.

I have a mixed review of that community college program but a hugely positive review of that private career college program. Master instructor.

We can be skeptical of for-profit degree-granting colleges in the States broadly while accepting that some have credible programs at decent prices that can be reasonable options for some students. Why shouldn't the same extend to non-degree career colleges in Canada?

 

There are so FEW that fit the 'credible' profile, Jonathan -- and so many that DON'T. Until that changes, I'm not on board with the proposal.

Also, I might mention, Community Colleges aren't all alike when it comes to trades. Mohawk C.A.A.T (College of Applied Arts and Technology), from which I graduated three times, had a new (at the time) $30 Million (in 1990 dollars) Trades Campus, with EVERYTHING. I took a bunch of trade-related courses there, in a Residential Construction and Design program: Framing, Plumbing, Electrical Work and Architectural Drafting. The rest of the courses, i.e "theory" were taught in a conventional classroom setting, on the main campus.

That Trades Campus had it all - tools, equipment, machines etc. AND instructors with years of experience in the fields they taught. Our drafting (and construction techniques) instructor was Deputy Chief of Building Inspectors for the City. Others had up to 30+ years of experience in the trades they were teaching - and the papers to go with, naturally. A couple even had degrees.

It'd be hard for a private school to duplicate either the facility, or the quality of instruction. I was a hopeless math student in high school - but 35 years later, in these classes, I learned basic trigonometry well enough to cut rafters and build a roof, lay out a foundation etc. Unlike high school math - I knew WHY it was good to learn it. Big difference.

 

Pythagoras and Hipparchus would have been proud of me.

 

Come to think about it - you're right. Even talking about the most blatant, visa mill, PCCs - their students are statistically younger, mobile, with decent chance to know or learn English on at least functional level. If a country can't use this kind of human capital to grow the economy, that is not on immigrants. Neither is regulation of visa mill PCCs, for that matter.

Also. The writer mentions primary physician shortage, and proposes to import 10,000 doctors from abroad. That is a brain dead cruel joke. Point system already does that, and the docs have near-0% chance to get a residency spot and a license. Of the 3 doctors I know personally, one retrained as a burn wound nurse, one moved to upstate NY, and one returned to Ukraine. I'm not sure that article is to be taken seriously.

 

The article that Tadj quoted is an article from The Globe and Mail. That is a right-center source with a High accuracy rating. This is very good. However, it's clearly marked as an opinion piece not a news article. So regular editor review and fact checking is not really applicable.

 

I saw that. Yes, clearly. Hence, my remarks. You know what opinions are like... remember "everybody's got one and they all stink." I'm sure you've heard that one before. Never more true than in this case.

 

True. Stink comes in infinite varieties.