Public College–Private Partnerships: Lessons Learned for Ontario’s Postsecondary Education System

The recent and rapid increase in the number of PCPP campuses in the GTA and the influx of international students sparked considerable public attention. [...] Colleges and private partners shared tuition revenue; typically, the private partner retained 70– 80% of the total revenue, and the remainder went to the public college (Office of the Auditor General of Ontario, 2021). [...] Although there is some correspondence between the types of work (NOC) with available positions and PCPP programming — for example, the proportion of online job postings for business-related occupations and the proportion of business-related programs offered — this alignment does not account for the educational requirements of the advertised positions, due to the nature of the NOC classification. [...] The dashboard categorizes online job postings in terms of the postings’ associated economic region,21 NOC codes and TEER codes.22 While this is not a precise measure of labour market gaps, it is a high-level depiction of labour market demand in terms of the type of work (NOC) and the type and/or level of training, education, experience and responsibilities (TEER) required for a given occupation in. [...] The sum of the annual counts for all Ontario (n=2,040,260) did not equal the sum of the annual counts for each of the Ontario economic regions (n=1,632,408).