How Canada became an education superpower (opens in new tab)

Speaking as a Canadian...

The U.S. still has ten times our population. With a population of just over 35 million, Canada is the world's 38th most populous country. That's a little over two Mumbai's. Perhaps Canada will become more influential in the years to come, but a superpower?

If you were simply referring to education, again, Canada is unlikely to compete with the U.S.'s ivy league in the near future. Our universities have higher standards than U.S. universities on average, but we lack both low-end crapiversities and truly elite institutions that can generate the kind of funding a U.S. ivy league university can. If you can't make it into the ivy league than a Canadian university is a great option, but if you can...

Our government isn't investing significantly more than the U.S. on research on a per capita basis, so the bulk of grant money in North America is still in the U.S.. Also, our tech sector is sluggish and poorly paid as compared to that of the U.S.. Lots of people like the idea of moving from the U.S. to Canada... until they find out they'll be making half as much for the same work!

No, Canada isn't poised to become a superpower anytime soon. The best we can hope for is improvement. We're going to see a lot of articles like this from U.S. authors because they're really not happy with their politics right now, nor should they be. However, the reality is that Canada is still a bit of a backwater. We're North America's Sweden. A nice place to live, but too small to really make a huge impact.

> I think Canada is well poised to be the next big super power, replacing the USA.

With all due respect, I think that is a very far fetched assumption. Canada is not one of the premier auto manufacturing nations like US, Germany, Japan, S. Korea. Auto manufacturing is a good indicator of a nation's industrial power imho because it requires a balanced combination of design, engineering, manufacturing, logistics, and marketing.

Also, it annoys me that US is getting so much flack for the seemingly anti-negative immigration policy. Let's not forget US has been accepting more legal AND illegal immigrants than any other nation, since 1970s. I may be wrong and would really welcome any correction on this.

To avoid flame war, I will just stop there.

Respectfully.

In the typical sense, Canada will not become an economic superpower. However, countries can also posess cultural capital and I think Canada sets a great example by being the first country to have multiculturalism as a federal policy. The successful integration of citizens in a multicultural society will be viewed highly (and probably romanticized) by the citizens of other countries.

> Speaking as an Indian, I think Canada is well poised to be the next big super power, replacing the USA.

It's not poised at all in fact. It has no chance of becoming a superpower or replacing the US. That's a very, very far fetched premise (might as well say Sweden).

Canada has 36 million people with a very slow population growth rate. They've added a mere 10 million in three decades. Their GDP hasn't net expanded since 2008 in dollar terms ($1.55t in 2008; $1.53t in 2016). By comparison, since 2008, the US has added annual economic output the size of three Canadas (~$4.5 trillion).

Unless you're projecting Canada will have a one million dollar GDP per capita equivalent in the future - ~20 years out - while the US somehow completely languishes (despite there being no evidence to support such an outcome). That's what it will take for Canada to become a superpower. It's impossible.

Not quite. They don't have the pop. China is on the verge. Time will tell if they clear the bar, or they stall like Japan (they have the advantage of land and pop., but it's getting older). Russia, if they ever just got their economic and political house in order could again become a rival in a couple decades.

Right now the only contender is China. They have money and they have been throwing it around in Africa like nobody's business. They are also flexing in the SCS to impress their neighbors in PH, VN, MY, JP, etc.

Germany will only ever be a regional power, but not global. They don't have the reach.

Canada can be a super BRAIN powerhouse, its success in funding deep learning/reinforcement learning through its dark days, showing some really interesting perspectives of how its research system works, and it seems pretty solid and robust and have a different focus on long term goal. And I would predict, as Trump administration continues to use immigration as scapegoats to push for its agenda and its political vision turns inwards into infighting, US cannot be that techie/entrepreneur wonderland it once persuades the world it is.

However, there is no chance Canada can be a global power on all scales, as what US is now. They don't have big enough of population, not that important as a market, much of its land is not inhabitable or farmable, and it surely cannot catch up with US as regards to the military power.

Mind you that Canada have its own conservative power, it is just a different cycle, and it surely gets a lot of inspiration from Trump's takeover. So, let's be a little realistic and don't let your emotion triumphs over your rationale.

Canada has a smaller population than California, it doesn't have enough cannonfodder to be a superpower.

The size of economy of California is comparable to that of Canada . How do foresee Canada overtaking the entire USA as an economic powerhouse ? And why is china considered not a competitor for superpower while Germany is ?

Superpower only in the sense that Canada could become an influential, outward-facing country like Norway, Switzerland or Singapore with their high qualities of life and host to the headquarters of non-governmental organizations. I would also add that with climate change and global unrest throughout the world, Canada is well positioned geographically. With regard to being a place for the world's most ambitious in entertainment, sports or business, it's unclear if Canada will challenge any major country in our lifetimes.

> totally forgetting the important role immigrants have played in the rich and success journey so far.

OOTH, being an immigrant in an unbuilt country where winter will kill you in 6 month if you do not get to work 24/7 building a shelter is different that being an immigrant in a fully developed country and collect welfare (which a lot of current "refugee" are doing).

Hanging out with immigrant kids in the US I would tend to agree. A few years in the Persian Gulf with mass immigrant youth mixing with a GCC citizen subset in schools as a policy requirement still provided lots of anecdotes that those GCC students care a lot less than expat kids despite pressure on the latter. They can get jobs slated for GCC nationals only with lax requirements. Many see little value out of college beyond the elite who wanted out.

Now immigrant and expat to me means overlapping national and ethnic and national backgrounds. It is an issue of the intended period of their residency.

I think govt policy was hoping for the later in institutions like the one I worked at, and it made me sad.

Yeah, I'd like to see these stats broken down to immigrants. I'd guess that the immigrants are actually leading the way.

My guess is that Canada is careful about selecting those allowed to migrate for education which helps a lot here.

Your lack of prejudice is really admirable.

Not only motivate but provide more motivated/mature peers. Most of my friends in school were immigrants for this reason.

Mind you, I also know high school graduates who never bothered to learn English. They find a way to make their living in Chinatown (which is slowly expanding across the city).

The majority attitude of a classroom was ultimately how I tried to behave during highschool.

So you are arguing for skills/intelligence based immigration policies?

> When half of your peers have an immigrant's work ethic

That many?

I would say a technical education is an education, but I agree, pure academia isn't for everyone - though the article doesn't distinguish this. In fact, Switzerland does very well by the OECD metric [1].

Why is education important? Can I suggest we compare two countries singled out in the article as 'could do better's - the USA and UK, and their recent democratic decisions. Compare that to Canada's cabinet, who, for example, has appointed someone with a PhD as minister for science [2], a doctor as minister for health [3] etc etc. I don't think I need to give examples of Scandinavian countries which regularly top the rankings for both wealth and pay equality.

Maybe a population where the country has valued education are less likely to say they "have had enough of experts" [4], more likely to respect the knowledge of a specialist, and more likely to have skills which are capable of transferring to the changing work market.

The problem is that investing in education has its pay-offs 20-30 years down the line, which is why, even if we believe in education, governments are reluctant to actually spend the money on it.

[1] http://www.oecd.org/edu/bycountry/switzerland/

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kirsty_Duncan

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jane_Philpott

[4] https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Michael_Gove

If you accept that what really means the sentence "the good of the country" is "the good of all the people of the country" , something that, by the way, it seems we have forgotten lately, then education by itself is a desired outcome.

Education, good health and, in general, a happy life for all should be the goal, not the means.

Also, in this age, the most important asset is knowledge, because almost anything else can be compensated for with knowledge.

I would be interested to see your source about Switzerland. Not that I am doubting the claim but it is a small country with some relatively big universities in Zurich, Geneva, Fribourg.

To ponder that assertion, I would also add that you have some of the two best ranked engineering universities in continental Europe (EPFL and ETHZ), the best hotel school in the world (EHL) and one of the best business school in the world (St-Gallen).

Highly educated immigrants could be a boon to a society. Or it could be a drag on wages of white collar workers.

Nothing is ever all good or all bad.

> In other words education is important but the focusing on education especially higher but also on the elementary level as some sort of indication of how well a country is fairing is not really a useful metric.

It isn't even a good metric for determining a nation's education status. The number of quality universities is a far better indicator.

Canada has a handful of quality universities. The US has hundreds. So how much sense does it make to call canada an education superpower?

The only real problem I see is that comp. levels in Canada are not as high as the US while COL in most of the major cities is similar to NYC. As a (legal) immigrant to the US, while Canada definitely sounds very attractive, I don't want to take a major hit to my quality of life just to escape Trumpland...

Objective non-biased journalists can't let any opportunity to bash Trump slip by.

French immersion is also criticized for segregating the academically-minded families who put their students through it from the general population.

The best parts of it can, and should be replicated across the general student population, without creating a taxpayer-funded charter school system.

Yeah, none of my Canadian cousins speak a spot of French. The mandate is junk.

> It effectively ensures that we are all exposed to two languages in school

French education is a complete joke in large parts of the country.

Equality of opportunity is what is important, not equality of outcome, which is what some people try to conflate it with.

> Real education superpowers are those with top UNIVERSITIES which in turn produce economic gains/growth/etc.

Why is your metric considered more apt than the article's? Good student performance consistently correlates with higher-paying jobs and higher quality of life. At the nation level, this correlates to higher Human-Development Index, which is generally considered a pretty good thing to have...

> If canada was a true economic superpower, we'd see them producing Google, Facebook, Microsoft, etc.

That is utter nonsense. What does this have to do with education at all? Bill Gates, Paul Allen, Mark Zuckerberg, Sean Parker, and Steve Jobs were all college dropouts. They simply had the right idea at the right time. Their economic success has very little to do with the U.S. education system.

Someone hasn't had their coffee yet. We do have top-tier universities (UBC, University of Toronto, UWaterloo), who have produced outstanding research and individuals who went on to do great work abroad and developing here at home. We're home to top-tier companies like Shopify. Plus our education is much more consistent across the board, not as pay-to-win like America.

And how is 150 years of forming the Dominion of Canada not something to celebrate? "150 years ago, Quebec, Ontario, New Brunswick and Nova Scotia – united to create the Canadian Confederation, called the Dominion of Canada. On account of the British North America Act that became law July 1st 1867, these British colonies would be recognized as an independent nation."

http://www.canadainternational.gc.ca/france/150Canada150.asp...

Google et al are largely a consequence of the Cold War. That is government programs dumped massive amounts of money into tech programs creating the first wave of wealthy tech entrepreneurs, since that time the feedback loop has continued.

The valley would not exist without quality schools, but those schools are no better than Canada's. Evidence for that is the significant number of Canadians recruited to work in the valley. Google and others hire Canadians because their schools put out top performers.

It depends on your definition of a good university.

For you, the most important result might be economic gains/growth and for others, it might be scientific/academic achievements such as Nobel prizes, research papers, major scientific breakthroughs, etc.

If that's the case then the US is not the only education superpower.

While we've got the cynicism out, I'll do you one better. I think its that Americans on the whole just don't care about public anything.

Public education, public healthcare, public transportation, public libraries, public lands.

Decades of the Republican party screaming that government is the enemy while gutting every public institution that it can get its hands on has led to a real, tangible decline in the quality of public services.

Then from here you get into a vicious cycle of "Wow, our train system is horrible. But I'm already paying for my car; I don't want to have to pay for that chump who can't afford a car to get to work." Or "What a shame about the state of our local school. But I'm already paying for little Billy to go to Catholic school. Why should I pay for the neighbor's education as well?"

Not sure about how we get ourselves out of this mess. But I feel like just generally giving a shit about our neighbors and communities would be a good start. Seems like we're heading in the wrong direction for the time being though.

Coming from Europe, I can tell you that secondary Canadian education is laughable at best.

Pay and job security are usually lumped in together but aren't quite the same. I think most people would support a relatively good wage for teachers if there was more accountability. Even in Canada it is notoriously hard to fire bad teachers.

Huh, why are you singling out France out of the blue?

I'd say that the fact that France is better than OECD average with relatively low teacher pay (though higher than the average salary in the country) seems to indicate that salary isn't everything, on the contrary.

The differences regarding immigration to Canada and France might be a far more important factor though.

Modern society does not have any metaphysical meaning associated with it and everything is heavily specialized and distributed using self-interest. This at the end seems to be a recipe for eventual failure. Why? One reason is that self-interests start aligning with each other forming monopolies and conglomerates which is essentially corruption manifest. The modern civilization needs an overarching metaphysics which then ties to a sense of morality of each individual serving the entire society rather than just themselves. That's the only hope we have for a future. Otherwise the aligned self-interest will destroy civilization.

If you carry this out you see its implications everywhere in the system. The food production does not serve any goals of society, instead food production is focused on optimizing for costs and yield. What this leads to is intensive farming which then leads to depletion and fragility which leads to disease. In terms of actually producing the food to eat, i.e, processed food, again self-interest produces highly addictive foods that increase profit, the cost of that is paid by the other side of the bargain.

When that self-interest of corporations aligns with academia or even the self-interest of academia itself, it then starts focusing on profit and educating students for the needs of corporations. Which then feeds into this sort of cycle of people who serve corporations, and corporations who serve themselves. And society pays the price.

>> It seems to me like every second country is an education superpower

Everybody is above average.

Also, Manitoba is ranked almost last within Canada for science, reading, and math

This is my experience throughout gradeschool as well.

The explanation is quite evident: the immigration policies put in place promote such that only the best come in.

Thanks, we changed it.