I work at a public online school with adults (18 and over) who want to graduate or upgrade. I meet highly motivated people every day who want nothing more than to qualify for a job in health care, including sonography. However, the provincial government withdrew funding about a year ago, increasing cost to the student to a prohibitive $550 per course.
I have hundreds of students who cannot afford these fees. There is no financial aid for them. These are people who graduated but need to return to upgrade their math, science and English. Some did not complete the required courses with the needed grades. In addition, colleges require that applicants redo their math if it has been more than five years since they completed the course.
It is my experience that students do not do their best academic work when they are 15 to 18 years old. It is when they identify a goal or have been working that they realize what they might like to do. How many times do I hear adults say: “Í wish I’d worked harder in high school”? When I remind them of all of the other things they have to contend with at 16 years of age, they nod and remember.
So why do we put barriers up for these people? They are our next generation of workers and they deserve our support.
Michael Jones
Victoria
