Education and workforce development are essential to improve productivity and reduce inequality. How can we ensure that our young people have access to accurate, relevant, and readily available information to support their educational and career choices?

CIRANO researchers will present work addressing these issues from different angles at a half-day conference on December 4.

The emerging bioeconomy sector offers interesting careers accessible to a wide range of young Quebecers with the appropriate training, particularly at the college level. The bioeconomy involves the application of scientific and technological developments to the agriculture, health, chemical, and energy industries. In Émergence de la bioéconomie : implications pour le développement du marché du travail au Québec (to be published), Michel Magnan and Bryan Campbell analyze job offers in the United States, Canada, and Quebec and attempt to determine whether the observed and potential labor market trends in the United States in the bioeconomy might be similar in Quebec.

The work of Dalibor Stevanovic and Genevieve Dufour, currently in progress, focuses on the causes of the decline in the number of graduates in bachelor's and master's programs in economics over the past few decades. They document changes in the student population over the past 30 years and draw conclusions from interviews they conducted with professors and department directors.

Would a low tuition policy have an effect on enrollment in science and quantitative programs? In L’effet du coût des études supérieures sur les choix de filières stratégiques, scientifiques et mathématiques au Québec et au Canada, Christian Belzil and co-authors address this question. They suggest that any expansion of the university system driven by new students attracted by lower tuition fees would result in a decrease in the proportion of students choosing STEM fields.

In Le rendement privé et social de la scolarité postsecondaire professionnelle, collégiale et universitaire au Québec, François Vaillancourt and Brahim Boudarbat estimate the private and social rates of return in Quebec for postsecondary education at the vocational, college, and university levels for women and men in various fields of study. They show that the profitability of pre-college vocational training is higher than the rate of return on technical college training, which is itself higher than that of pre-university college training.

The morning will end with a panel discussion with the researchers.