CEGEP: The Missing Link Between High School and University
Freshmen year of university is one of the hardest times of a student’s life. The transition from high school to college-level work coupled with living away from home for the first time make freshman year a tough year. Our college system does not need to be this way. In fact, there may be a different way. There is one place that does it differently from the rest of North America. A place with a step between high school and university. A place with much greater university retention rates. That place is Quebec. That place is the CEGEP.
Education in Quebec is unlike anywhere else in North America. This is not only because the majority of Quebec students study in French, but because Quebec handles higher education in a different way than the majority of North America. While the majority of North American students graduate at the end of the 12th grade, or around the age of 18; students in Quebec are awarded their diplomas at the end of the 11th grade, or around the age of 17. Quebec students then immediately begin their studies at a CEGEP, from the French name, Collège d’enseignement général et professionnel; or translated into English: General and Vocational College.
A CEGEP is neither a high school nor a university in the conventional sense. Students in CEGEPs are considered more responsible than high school students, and are given more freedom in determining their paths. CEGEP students generally are required to take general education classes in French, English, the Humanities and the Sciences; however like university students CEGEP students are able to choose a major. In addition, many but not all CEGEP students choose to live on campus.
CEGEP students are also able to choose one of two paths; they are able to choose a 2-year pre-university path that aims to put its graduates towards success at one of Canada’s many universities, or a 3-year pre-professional path that aims to allow its graduates direct entry into the workforce if they choose. CEGEPs allow students the chance to gain control of their education one year earlier and begin working towards their degrees.
One may be able to note that those in the rest of North America appear to be craving the CEGEP model of education in the form of Advanced Placement, or AP classes, and the International Baccalaureate, or IB program. Those who take AP and IB courses enjoy the benefit of being able to take college level courses while still in high school and potentially earning course credits. Students graduating high school with AP and IB credit are becoming increasingly more common and this has not come without issues or controversy.
The issues with AP’s like all good things come in threes. These issues are the lack of consensus on their true equivalence to college courses, the AP arms race that is taking place between high school seniors and its resultant issues of AP overloading, and the negative impacts that these courses have on public schools. The first issue is the fact that many colleges are beginning to not accept AP’s. Dartmouth, a member of the Ivy League, recently stopped giving students credit for AP classes. Many college professors have begun to question the AP exams equivalence to their courses, including a particularly scathing editorial in The Atlantic by Boston College professor John Tierny. This partially has to do with the history of AP’s; AP’s were initially only available at a few high schools where only the brightest students got the chance to take one or two AP courses. As the College Board expanded; AP courses were unable to keep their equivalence to college courses, leading to the mess we have now. Only now have universities begun to truly notice this discrepancy, and begin to not give credit as Dartmouth has done.
In addition, many schools do not allow students to skip semesters due to AP credits, meaning a student will still have to attend university for the same number of years even when coming in with course credits.What this means is that in no way does the AP system provide the early college experience it claims to provide, instead providing courses that are not equivalent while not enabling AP graduates to skip any semesters of study. There are also issues with teaching to a standardized test, and there have been criticisms that AP courses focus too much on memorizing facts and interpreting data and not on truly engaging with the subject matter. Instead, schools with AP have to teach to the test. If the goal is extending access to higher education to more people and at an earlier age, utilizing our community college system; or CEGEPs; would be superior to the AP system our country currently runs on.
American university admissions are becoming more and more competitive as more and more students vie to attend college in an economy that demands a college education for more and more jobs. With Ivy League acceptance rates well below 10 percent and an Ivy League diploma as desirable as ever, students seek ways to stand out from the vast sea of applicants that they are competing with. The majority of selective colleges claim academic rigor as one of their most important admission criteria; meaning universities want students who take the most challenging courses.
This to many students means AP’s. No longer is taking one or two AP classes enough to win a spot at one of the most prestigious universities; there are students who take four, five, six, or even seven. This can have dire mental health effects and this can force teens to spend all of their time studying rather than enjoying their high school years. Even worse is that one needs to receive a 4 or 5 on an AP test to get credit, meaning that all of that work could end up being for nothing if one did not study correctly or one does not have a skilled instructor. This leads to an AP arms race where students take more AP courses and drive themselves insane while doing it, with no guarantee of actually receiving credit. In fact of the 38 programs that are offered, just 2 have an average test score of 4 or higher; meaning that the vast majority of those who take AP’s need to take the same course once again; defeating the AP program’s entire purpose. This is horrible, and with the goals of providing an earlier entry into college level courses and an ability to go in-depth into topics that fascinate students, CEGEP wins out big time.
The last issue with AP’s come with the impact that they have on school systems. AP’s force schools to devote a ton of resources to them, and many times the best teachers are redirected to teach AP students. This diverts resources away from the rest of the school, and as AP’s have historically been mostly taken by students from wealthier districts, this could lead to already privileged groups receiving even greater privilege in the form of smaller classes and higher-quality teaching. To improve our nations educational system, the resources should be spread to help the many, not the few. For this reason, AP’s fail at providing a universal pre-college system open to all regardless of income; CEGEP’s perform that role better.
CEGEPs would also help those that currently attend community college as well. Due to the fact that most students attending large state or private universities skip the associates degree level all together, one can say that community colleges suffer from a sort of “brain-drain.” Therefore, one can say that in our society there is a stigma around community colleges, as many people assume that those that attend community college can either not afford another school or do not have the grades to get in.
This was my experience when I took an intro to business class at North Shore Community College in Danvers, MA. The professor was helpful and knowledgeable, however she was woefully under-payed and did not have many resources available to teach the class. You could also quickly tell who was there because of family or economic reasons, and who was there since they were not academically capable of attending another school. There were many students who were extremely motivated, completed all of the homework, and therefore were well-prepared for their exams and excelled in the class. Others however, were unable to complete the work, and this may have been for personal, economic, or familial reasons; or maybe just do to lack of effort. Either way, if more students of wealthier backgrounds or students with high academic standards attended those institutions, they’d receive more attention and resources in the public eye. Converting our education system to a CEGEP model accomplishes this perfectly, as all students would begin their studies at a CEGEP. If we looked at a CEGEP rather as a place for less qualified or low income students to go, but instead as the first step of anyone’s college education; it would improve the experience for everyone, rich and poor. Proof of this is that Quebec’s education system educates more people of diverse economic backgrounds, with ultra-low tuition combined with the CEGEP model.
There is also an issue with students in our society not knowing what they want when they enter university. Many students spend their freshman and sophomore years before deciding on their major. Then, in order to meet their degree requirements, they need to cram classes in their junior and senior years. Many students also attend universities that do not have the major they eventually want. An example of this is my cousin, who attended a liberal arts school, and eventually discovered his true interest was in business which his school did not have. My cousin had to wait until the graduate level to study business or perform a painful transfer after his sophomore or junior year. CEGEP solves this issue, as students would have had a chance to explore their passions for two years before applying to university. Students could then choose the university with the program that most appeals to them, and universities would receive students who would be immediately useful as researchers and scholars.
CEGEP’s are skillful at reducing educational inequality as that is exactly what they were engineered to do. In the 1960's and 1970’s, Quebec underwent a period of great social, cultural, and political change known as la Revolution Tranquille, or in English, “The Quiet Revolution.” The Quiet Revolution was the time when Quebec, according to The Canada Guide, “ [did] a complete flip; [going] from being [Canada’s] most rural, religious, conservative [province] to Canada’s most urban, secular, and [progressive].”
Francophones who constitute a majority of Quebec’s population began to demand their rights and be seen as equals in their own province and in the nation of Canada as a whole. During this period, the ideology of Quebec nationalism rose, and the Quebecois elected politicians such as Robert Bourassa and Rene Levesque, who began to push for Quebec’s independence from Canada. The governments of Bourassa and Levesque also instituted laws intent on keeping Quebec a French province. This period forced the rest of Canada to take Quebec’s interests seriously and look at Quebec as a distinct society. During this period, Quebec became the province that we know it as today.
CEGEP’s were part of this movement and were founded as a way to bridge the educational divide between the Anglophone and Francophone Quebecois. Prior to this period, Francophone and Anglophone students in Quebec had completed different courses of study that eventually culminated in Francophone students having to complete an additional two years of schooling to attain the same degree. The CEGEP model was supposed to fix this issue, as Anglophone and Francophone students alike would complete the same path. The CEGEP model is itself a hybrid of the Anglophone and Francophone systems, with college coming before university like in the French system, but the total process taking the same amount of time as the Anglophone, as well as the rest of North America’s educational process takes. Combined with new laws making it easier for Francophones to find employment in French throughout Quebec; this reduced the gap in educational attainment and career outcomes between Anglophone and Francophone Quebec residents.
Due to the many other factors of the Quiet Revolution overshadowing the coming of the CEGEP model, those in the rest of North America have not quite stopped to ponder the adoption of CEGEP as a way to help our own students and reduce our own inequalities. While most of North America is not as divided among linguistic lines, there are still many racial and socioeconomic issues that the rest of the continent faces. Therefore, it was extremely difficult to find research concerning this topic, with even less of the research available in English. This is a shame, as for reasons hitherto discussed, CEGEP does appear to have many benefits that the rest of North American students and North American society at large could use. Perhaps because of this Quebec universities have some of the highest retention rates in all of Canada, and performs superior to other provinces when it comes to incorporating those of differing socioeconomic backgrounds. This is despite the fact that Quebec has the lowest high school graduation rate of any Canadian province at just 64%.
One may wonder how much adopting a CEGEP model would cost the taxpayer. The cost would likely be minimal as funds could be shifted from the senior year of high school and the community college system. In addition, the various other costs that have led to the skyrocketing cost of American college tuition could be reduced, more than freeing up enough money to fund a CEGEP system, if the previous transfers are not enough.
As one can see the CEGEP model has many benefits. From the closer relationships between students and faculty, its ability to allow students to explore their passions earlier on, to its ability to include students of more diverse socioeconomic backgrounds; CEGEPs contain many benefits that our continent needs. CEGEP could be the answer to our poorly designed college admission system, the mental health issues that plague college campuses, and the student debt crisis. With all of these possible benefits, it is worth giving CEGEP a try.
