THUNDER BAY — Graduates of Confederation College have one of the best track records in Ontario for being employed after finishing school, and express a high rate of satisfaction with their education, but the college wants to see more of its students graduating.
Using data from the 2020-2021 academic year, Colleges Ontario — the association representing the province's 24 public colleges — found that Confederation College had an overall graduation rate of 60 per cent.
The lowest rate was at Northern College in Timmins, with 58.7 per cent, while the graduation rate at most schools ranged between 63 and 69 per cent.
It was over 70 per cent at only two colleges.
"It's good to get this feedback. We've known for three years now that we need to move this metric up so we are working on a retention and graduation strategy to help improve our graduation rate," Confederation College president Kathleen Lynch said.
Lynch said she's hoping for better results in that regard when the next report comes out.
"How do we encourage students to stick with it and graduate? That'll be our challenge, and what kind of further supports we can put in place. Because we offer students a lot of supports, but obviously we need to look at this again."
Details of the strategy will be announced in the coming months, but it''s expected to include a focus on two-year diploma programs, where a graduation rate of about 55 per cent pulled down the college's overall rate.
Much higher proportions of students graduated from one-year programs, three-year advanced diploma programs, and one-year post-diploma programs.
Lynch expressed pleasure with the college's results in two other key performance indicators reported by Colleges Ontario.
Almost 84 per cent of Confederation graduates said they were very satisfied or satisfied with the usefulness of the education they received toward achieving their goals, the third-highest rating among the 24 colleges.
In terms of post-graduate employment, 91 per cent of Confederation graduates were working within six months of graduation, the second-best rate in Ontario and barely one percent shy of top spot.
"These results are consistent with recent years, as the college has maintained high results in employment and satisfaction indicators," Lynch said.
The employment data from Colleges Ontario includes graduates working in any profession, regardless of whether their job is directly related to the field they studied in.
"You have to appreciate that not everybody looks for a job in their specific field of study, and it can be hard to measure when you have a field of study that crosses a number of areas," Lynch said. "It's tricky to track."
Under an agreement with the provincial government, colleges are also being measured with regard to employment in graduates' field of study.
The COVID-19 pandemic delayed implementation, but Lynch said that data is currently being gathered, and Confederation College hopes to receive the feedback soon.
