On Feb. 13, Minister of Education and Training Dave Johnson told Ontario postsecondary institutions they must be able to tell students how successful their programs are.

      How to measure success? By counting how many students graduate, find jobs or default on their student loans after they graduate.

      The government provides the loan-default numbers supplied by the banks. Universities and colleges record the graduation rates. But few keep track of whether, when and what jobs their graduates find.

      The placement data will be "very difficult, costly and time-consuming" to collect, says interim president David Smith. "My feeling at this point is that it is not feasible because of the cost, the time period and the problems of comparability."

      Smith told Senate March 10 that discussions are taking place with the ministry. Could the schools use Statistics Canada data, for instance, that reflect job-success rates among graduates?

      Does the success-rate, as defined by the ministry, reflect the value of an academic program, and should it guide students' decisions? "I think one would have to use the data very carefully and with considerable caution because clearly people choose jobs for different reasons and the value of a university degree is not purely in terms of jobs taken," said Smith. There is a problem with indicators such as these, he said.

      Trent can rest more easily over the ministry's announcement to force postsecondary institutions to share the cost of those programs with a high loan-default rate. If 15 per cent more than the provincial average of students default on their loan repayments, the school would have to cover part of the debt. Trent's 1997 loan-default rate was 17.8 per cent, well below the 23.5 per cent average. It was even less in 1996 -- 14.2 per cent. Default rates have not been calculated for individual programs.