Future to Discover: Seventh Year Post-Secondary Impacts Report

Authors:Reuben Ford Taylor Shek-Wai Hui Isaac Kwakye

This report presents the final results from the Future to Discover project. It is the fourth and final in a series produced for New Brunswick, evaluating new ways to tackle a key challenge provinces face in meeting their future needs for skilled workers: engaging enough young people in post-secondary education.

Promotion of high school students’ access to post-secondary education is a major goal of Canadian governments, in part because of its increasingly important role in helping individuals attain social and economic success. Yet, uncertainty remains as to the best policy interventions to encourage students to make the transition. Future to Discover tested two interventions, separately and in combination.

The research design produces rigorous evidence about what works to increase access to post-secondary education, particularly for lower-income students and those whose parents have little or no post secondary experience. Future to Discover offered either or both of two interventions in early high school:

Explore Your Horizons (EYH) that offered enhancing early career education in workshop sessions run after school for Grades 10, 11, and 12;
Learning Accounts (LA) a “guarantee” of a $8,000 grant to pursue PSE, made to lower-income students;
Explore Your Horizons plus Learning Accounts (EYH+LA), whereby some students received offers of both interventions. All the results of this report are presented for lower-income students (from families with below median income) and are summarized in Table ES1

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Project Details

Published: October 2019
Capability: Experimentation
Policy Area: Post-Secondary Education - Access and Persistence, P-12 Education - Specialized Services and Programs
Population: Students - Youth
Type: Report