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I was intrigued by Bob Irish's remark that half of Canadian youth start university. The most recent stats that I could lay my hands on show that total full-time university enrolment as a proportion of the 18-24 age group was 20.3% in 94-95, up from 18.0% in 90-91. (even though the proportion was up the number of students enrolled was down as this age group became a smaller part of the population) Single age distributions for the same year for university undergraduate full-time enrollments are all under 20% (15% for 19 year olds and just under 17% for 20 and 21 year olds). If you include Community College, full time post secondary enrolment for that year is still only 33.5% of 18-24 year olds. I'm not trying to catch you out, Bob, but I am curious about your figures and about why people might like to believe that our post-secondary system is more democratic than it really is. Even if the participation rate were 50% would that make it democratic? A greater proportion of the post-war generation went to university than their parents but these days university is becoming more expensive all the time and many supports have disappeared. University enrolments have fallen the last few years. Sorry for the red herring! Laura Atkinson [log in to unmask]