Access and Barriers to Post-Secondary Education in Canada: Evidence from a Longitudinal PISA Dataset

Abstract

This paper exploits the longitudinal Youth in Transition Survey, Cohort A (YITSA) to investigate access and barriers to post-secondary education (PSE) in Canada. The paper first looks at how access by age 21 is related to family background characteristics, including family income and parental education. The effects of the latter are found to dominate those of the former. Attention is then turned towards the 25 percent of youths who do not access PSE and the barriers they face. Twenty-three percent of this group state that they had no aspirations for PSE and 43 percent report they face no barriers. Conversely, 22 percent (5.5 percent of all youths in our sample) claim that “finances” constitute a barrier. Further analysis suggests, however, that affordability is an issue in only a minority of those cases, suggesting that the majority of those reporting financial barriers simply do not perceive PSE to be of sufficient value to be worth pursuing. Our general conclusion is that “cultural” factors are the principal determinants of PSE participation in Canada.