Category(s):
Education and Training
Status: Closed
Principal: Herb Emery
Project Number: P0080
Year Approved: 2021
As one of the largest community colleges in the province, the New Brunswick Community College (NBCC) has a vested interest in its students’ mobility and outcomes post-graduation. This project will assess inter-regional brain-gain and brain-drain by investigating the mobility and retention rates of graduates from NBCC, highlighting, where possible, factors behind graduates’ decisions to return to and/or live/work in a given New Brunswick (NB) community. It also aims to investigate how a student’s educational program might affect their decision to remain in or relocate to specific city in NB.
Of the post-secondary institutions in NB, colleges show the highest provincial retention rates. A recent student retention report published by the NB-IRDT revealed that 94% of college graduates are still in New Brunswick (NB) one year after graduation (Bhuiyan, Daigle, McDonald & Miah, 2020). For those who reported NB as their previous residence, their one-year retention was 97%. However, while this study shed light on an important policy concern for colleges, retention rates for individual colleges and mobility decisions as it relates to the community the graduate resided in after graduation were not considered in detail.
Given the likely important contribution that NBCC graduates make to their local economy of residence as well as the broader provincial economy, assessing the factors behind the decision to remain or relocate is an important policy concern. This project will consider mobility and labour market outcomes of NBCC graduates across a range of personal, geographic and economic characteristics.
Based on the assumption that NBCC graduates contribute to their own communities as well as the local economy in which their campus is based, assessing the factors behind the decision to remain or relocate is an important policy concern.
Each outcome will be looked at by personal (demographic and background) and geographic characteristics of graduates.
