Public attitudes toward education in Ontario 1986: Sixth OISE survey

Abstract

This sixth OISE/UT survey finds that the Ontario public sees a prevalent historical trend in the job market in regard to increasing levels of skills necessary for employment, and the survey indicates that Ontarians believe that this trend will continue, with increasing proportions of future jobs requiring post-secondary education. Although there is very widespread perception of a current surplus of university graduates for the available jobs, this is generally seen as a less serious educational problem than the large number of people with minimal job skills and educational attainments. While on-the-job training is the preferred, immediate response to unemployment of the unskilled, the public remains more reluctant about the more general and radical option of removing technical and vocational education from the high schools. In spite of consistently expressing a majority view that universities should put more emphasis on job-oriented programs, the Ontario public has also shown growing majority opposition to tying postsecondary enrolment level to the availability of jobs, and similarly general reluctance to restrict access to educational programs are both consistent with the growing support for increased funding for all levels of education. Thus there is little indication in these survey findings that current conditions of unemployment and underemployment have yet shaken an abiding faith in the Ontario public in the capacity of established forms of education to provide a vital means of coping with the future.