Education must be a pillar of economic strategy, says SFU president

It is time for a “fundamental rethink” of British Columbia’s PSE system, says Simon Fraser University President Andrew Petter. In a recent speech, Petter expressed his desire to see BC become the “education province” of Canada, which he argues can only happen if the province treats education as a core component of its economic strategy. Petter reinforced his call for a greater emphasis on PSE in BC by citing a recent Conference Board of Canada study, starting that “today, over 95,000 B.C. residents are not employed because they have not obtained a level of education adequate to meet current employers' needs.' And while some of this educational shortfall is in trades and applied skills, the largest gap, it turns out, is in bachelor- and graduate-level education.” Straight