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UR Guarantee’s search for jobbers

Author: Farron Ager – Contributor

In the face of criticism regarding exclusionary practices, the UR Guarantee Program has formally announced that they will become more tolerant on student eligibility requirements. Starting Oct. 15, the UR Guarantee will be the first program across all Canadian universities to accept into its ranks students and recent graduates who are currently employed.

“We understand that some students may have not been given the opportunity to join the program when we first started back in 2009,” said an administrator, who wished to remain anonymous for the program during a press release. “We wish to make amends with these students and allow them to join the program, even after they have graduated and now hold down jobs of their own. It’s only fair.”

Under the program’s old mandate, a prospective student needed to have fewer than 30 credit hours, not hold a previous degree, and officially pinky-swear that they would complete their four-year degree in a maximum of five years. Now, anyone who is considered fully employed (permanent, part-time, term, contract, casual) or self-employed will be qualified to join the program.

Furthermore, the administrator added that the program will be more inclusive on what they consider a job in a student’s chosen field to ensure post-degree employability.

“If you’re working as a cashier, you’re expected to work with money, just like a real businessperson would, so business students need not worry. If you’re working as a salesperson, you have to be able to effectively communicate with people, even if it just a bunch of nonsense, so that covers most of arts. Of course, you’ve also pretty much got all the sciences covered if you’re working in the food industry with your cooking temperatures and the baking chemistry. Ever had to apply a bandage in a workplace-related injury? Boom. Nursing.”

With the updated policy, the program is hoping that the increase in students will directly result in an increase in UR Guarantee’s promise of workforce eligibility.

“Currently, with the new policy, we’re sitting at about a 83% job success rate, which is up significantly from the 7% of the year past, but if we can get enough students interested in the program to sign up, we will be able to get to a point where we can comfortably round that number up to 100%,” said the administrator. “Maybe then we can have an actual success story on our testimonials page from someone who has graduated from the program rather than people in the program who say that it will get them a job.”

Should students remain unimpressed with the program’s new mandate and are unable to find a job in the updated list of fields, they will still be eligible for the free tuition, so long as they are still able to come back to the university full time, pay for remaining fees and charges not covered by the Guarantee, and redeem the credit hours before they expire within a calendar year.

 

 

 

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