With the help of University of Ottawa researcher Ross Finnie, Canadian universities hope to convince potential students that the much-maligned liberal arts educations they offer will pay off handsomely in jobs and income.
Ross Finnie knows what many students think of a liberal arts education: It won’t pay off.
“You won’t get a job, or you’ll be stuck in a low-wage job — the whole barista thing,” says Finnie, director of the Education Policy Research Initiative at the University of Ottawa.
Universities Canada, which represents the country’s 97 universities, is all too aware of the “misperception” that the economic return from a liberal arts education is substandard.