With budget cuts the current focus of the BC Government, and many other provincial governments, the affects of such cuts are brought into focus in a just released report of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), where the importance of education investments is reviewed in preparation for the expected economic recovery.   The report is a gold mine of comparative information on the commitment to and results of education policy in a large number of developed and developing countries.

The report establishes conclusively that education pays both for individuals and for nations as a whole.  While there are considerable differences in the net payoffs depending on types of education, gender groups and countries, it confirms without a doubt that cuts to education are short sighted and counter productive.

The best example is the case of post graduate (masters degree or higher) education, which pays the biggest dividends across the majority of countries, although there is quite a bit of variability between countries.  The ratio of benefits to costs for men exceeds 4 to 1 in Czech Republic, the United States, Belgium and Hungary and exceeds 2 to 1 in sixteen out of twenty one countries surveyed.  Canada is sadly in the latter group although the ratio is very close to the 2:1 cut off.

One of the notable features of the findings is that in Canada the payoff to the nation is relatively speaking much greater than the payoff to the individual. Canada is firmly in the second rank below eight countries such as the United States, the Czech Republic and Ireland in the return to the individual from post graduate education. The reason is also clear – Canada requires individuals to finance a larger proportion of the cost than most of the nations in this group.  This cost is made more burdensome given that the overall return to such education is also lower in Canada than all of the other countries mentioned.   In fact, Canada ranks 14^th out of the 21 countries examined.  More alarming, the benefits of a post graduate degree are less than one quarter of those in the United States and one third of those in Ireland.  And while in the US, each dollar committed by an individual will make them better off by $4.00, in Canada that dollar will make an individual better off by only about $1.50.  In British Columbia, the return to the individual is likely even lower given relatively high tuition fees.

There is a need for serious soul searching in Canada and BC about policies toward education.  Because education is primarily a provincial responsibility, it is the provinces that must pay closest attention.  Most of the questions have to do with investment and financing.  Education is one place where a reliance on financing by individuals undermines a country’s ability to realize potential benefits.  It is a classic case where generous taxpayer financing is essential if a country is to realize its potential.  One need only look to Ireland where post secondary education is free and innovation and technology driven productivity gains high to see the connection.

Too many of our provincial governments are missing this important point.  And it is not restricted to provincial governments.  Over the past 30 years, the federal government has progressively reduced its commitment to post secondary education in Canada.  The message is clear.  Education pays substantial dividends.  It is one of places where it can be clearly established that government expenditures contribute to the future productivity of individuals and the country as a whole.

And yet as we have seen governments are once again whacking away.  In BC the government has for instance just announced a big cut to its already under funded student aid programs.  And the budget for universities and colleges has been and continues to be tightly constrained with all of the universities wrestling with deficits and cuts.

An additional problem revealed in the study is that the return to education in Canada is much lower for women than for men.  The reason for this is that women continue to be paid much less than men for the same work.  As long as this pattern continues, the incentive for women to pursue advanced education in the face of high costs will be weak.  This just adds to the loss of potential productivity gains from investments in education.  Until this gaps is closed, education will never make the contribution it should to Canada’s future.  Canada can only prosper with a high wage, high value added, high productivity economy.  Developing and sustaining such an economy depends first and foremost on maximizing the gains from education.  Adequate funding of education is the most important thing governments can do to get us there.  Ensuring that women share equally in those gains is equally important.

The Law Society of British Columbia has released an important report documenting the disappointing failure of the profession to retain women in practice and to promote women to senior partner positions.  The report finds that women have been entering the legal profession in BC in numbers equal to or greater than men for more than a decade and in substantial numbers for thirty years, yet women represent only about 34% of all practising lawyers in the province and only about 29% of lawyers in full-time private practice.  The under-representation of women in private practice in BC is reflected in number of women who are no longer practising within five years of call. Of all women called to the bar in 2003, only 66% retained practising status in 2008 compared with 80% of men called in the same year.  Canadian and US statistics indicate that women partners make up fewer than 16% of equity partners to about 20% of partners in large and medium size firms.

The report found that while some women leave the profession in order to address work-life balance conflicts, more important factors are that they do not feel valued, they do not get good work, or they face barriers to advancement.  The importance of this report cannot be understated.  The Law Society of BC has done society a great service in producing this report.  Sadly, its findings are representative of the situation in almost all modern organizations.  Discouraged women professionals and executives is a defining feature of work places today.  The reasons for women becoming discouraged are little different from those discovered by the Law Society.

This is without doubt one of the most discouraging and disappointing aspects of the work experience today in the modern organization.  Women expect satisfaction in work and a positive work experience just as men do.  The failure of modern organizations to provide these is both sad and stupid.  After having achieved so much in terms of education and positive work skills through participation in work, far too many highly capable women are suffering extreme frustration and disappointment with their work experiences.  And in undervaluing and underutilizing women, organizations are failing to capitalize on a large and important pool of talent.

Women are no different than men in their aspirations when joining the work force.  But research and observation confirms that a few years in a typical organization leaves most saddened, discouraged and disappointed.   They find themselves under challenged, under recognized and undervalued.  The plum assignments, the plum promotions and the plum opportunities go disproportionately to their male colleagues.  I know very few young, capable and smart women who are not experiencing this in their work. This is unfair.  It is also mean and demeaning.  It has no place in a modern society that is respectful and compassionate, and that values people regardless of gender or other attributes that have nothing to do with the ability to do the work efficiently and effectively.

When I became the senior Deputy Minister in the BC Government responsible for the public service in the early 1990’s, I was disturbed to find that women had never made up more than 10% of deputy minister level appointments, and that most who had been deputy ministers owed their positions to some unique factor such as having known well and worked closely with a minister or some other senior person in a position of power.  There was no systematic advancement of women in the public service.

I tried to understand this by interviewing a number of women who I thought capable to be candidates for senior positions to try to get some insights as to why this had not happened.  I found that most said it was not their choice.  They felt under-valued, un-recognized for their abilities and held down by an invisible glass ceiling.  But my real question was why this should be so, and few had any real answers.  Finally I realized I was looking in the wrong place for explanations.  I shifted my questioning to men who had been a various times in positions of power and instrumental to the promotion and hiring of senior civil service.  All had the same answer – that the pool of qualified and experienced women working their way up the system was small and thus provided limited opportunities to place women as deputy ministers.

From this it became clear to me that women were not being promoted because they were being overlooked in the promotion process.  The more I looked the more I became convinced that the problem was the assessment process and instruments used to make assessments.  Rather than looking objectively at capability and capacity to do the job, the process was relying formally and informally on the track record at being recognized and at winning the contest for recognition at middle management and professional levels.  Men were winning these informal and formal competitions hands down.  Seeing this, women had in large numbers opted out of the competition and either resigned themselves to junior roles or left- just as the recent report on the legal profession finds.

It was clear to me that it was essential to change the system and reconstruct the evaluation and assessment process to focus on potential and promise using such criteria as management intelligence, problem solving skills, analytical ability, personnel management skills and team work skills.  After making this change, the result was that within three years, over 40% of the deputy minister level positions were filled by women, and within five years the proportion was close to 50%.

There may be some who argue that these results were attributable to lower standards.  This is demonstrably unfounded.  Those involved will confirm that women were subject to an equal proportion of demotions and side-way transfer for underperformance.   They will also attest to the fact that evaluations and supervision was as demanding for them as their male counterparts.  And an evaluation of the work of the women deputy ministers showed that the quality of senior management was not in any way compromised.  And I can honestly say that the appointment of a woman to a position never required me to sacrifice standards of expected work performance.  A number of the appointments now occupy deputy minister positions in the federal government or top management positions in large organizations.  And perhaps the best thing of all – I can not foresee the BC government ever again reverting back to a male dominated senior management pool.  Fair evaluation is unlikely to be reversed because it works and it provides a superior result.

The lesson in my view is that the success of women in management and professions is almost wholly dependent on fundamental change in the way women are viewed in the work place, and on a commitment to change through new systems and procedures.  So long as women are seen as not having the potential because they have not succeeded as well in climbing the greasy poll in pursuit of promotion or plum work assignments, or they have different attitudes to work-life balance, or they don’t have equivalent experience, they will never be full participants in the professional and senior management pools.  But if employers commit to change, the women are there to do the job with equal ability, skill and discipline.  Given a fair chance, they will stay and do the jobs as well as anyone.  Until this happens, a major pool of effective and productive professionals and managers will never be utilized.  And women will be alienated and angry, for good reason.