Despite improved access in expanded postsecondary systems, the great majority of bachelor's degree graduates are taking considerably longer than the allotted four years to complete their four-year degrees. Taking longer to finish one's BA has become so pervasive in the United States that it has become the norm for official statistics released by the Department of Education to report graduation rates across a six-year window. While higher education scholars have increasingly explored how social class impacts college dropout, attrition, and completion, they have yet to examine the role social class plays in completing a four-year bachelor's degree on time. In this paper, we draw on the most recent cohort of the Baccalaureate and Beyond Longitudinal Survey (2008-2009) to examine who completes their bachelor's degrees on time. Our results indicate that despite controlling for academic performance, educational behaviors, program characteristics, and institutional characteristics, graduates from lower socioeconomic backgrounds do experience difficulties completing their degrees on time. Moreover, our results also reveal that the nature of these relationships vary for traditional and nontraditional students. Our findings highlight another important, albeit less obvious, way where inequality is maintained in expanded postsecondary systems.
Canada's fear of future skill and labor shortages has brought youth with disabilities to the forefront of public policy. Many universities are now reporting that an increased proportion of their graduating students identify as having a disability, and as a result, educational achievement-based programs designed to accommodate students' needs are growing across campuses. Despite recent attention by policymakers on improving accessibility standards and increasing employer incentives, young Canadians with disabilities continue to face barriers in their transitions to the workforce. The nature and extent of the early workforce inequalities faced by postsecondary graduates with disabilities remains unclear. This paper draws on the 2005 cohort of Statistics Canada's National Graduates Survey to examine the early workforce outcomes of postsecondary graduates with disabilities. Contrary to theories of human capital, the results reveal significant earnings gaps between graduates with and without disabilities of various fields of study and levels of schooling. Further, graduates with a disability are even more disadvantaged in terms of securing employment, as they were significantly less likely to be employed full-time, and were overrepresented among unemployed and part-time workers across various fields of study and levels of postsecondary education.
Differentiation policies have been implemented in Ontario higher education (HE) with the intent of manufacturing a more effi cient and higherquality system. Policy-makers have repeatedly touted their benefi ts, but the unintended consequences of differentiation policies remain neglected. Through this piece, we present a northern critique of differentiation policies grounded on the distance deterrence effects literature. We propose that differentiation policies threaten to exacerbate existing provincial north-south disparities in HE access, hampering human capital formation and economic development in northern communities. In addition, we specify some strategies to mitigate these detrimental effects and conclude by providing a conceptual framework through which to understand regional "blind spots" in differentiation policy.
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