Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
quintile on the Fraser Institute's index, while University Hill is in the top
five percent (Figure 7.1). The concentration of these top-ranked educa-
tional institutions in and around the Shaughnessy-Kerrisdale-Oakridge
region favoured by millionaire migrants in the 1986-96 period is notable
(cf. Figure 5.6). Among Korean families this cluster of schools is called
'Vancouver's eighth district' for its equivalent standing to the most elite and
competitive school district in Seoul (Kwak 2008). Something of an outlier
is Churchill Secondary School in south Oakridge. This school is now 90
percent Chinese-Canadian and was an early magnet for immigrants because
it is the only public school on the west side of the city that offers the
International Baccalaureate Programme, an enhanced international cur-
riculum that permits university entrance in the United States, Britain and
France as well as across Canada. The International Baccalaureate offers an
international education passport, of particular interest to cosmopolitan
immigrants with a global network. In the early years of overseas Chinese
migration to Oakridge a realtor told me about one of her clients looking for
a house on a short visit from Hong Kong. She held a piece of paper at their
first meeting, with two words on it: 'Oakridge, Churchill'.
A number of the public schools offer enriched programmes, variously in
the arts, in language immersion, in athletics or in a specialized mini-school
with high academic orientation. Because they are district programmes, appli-
cation is open to students outside normal school catchment areas. These
cross-boundary programmes enable parents to send their children from the
much lower-scoring eastside schools to the university-directed westside
schools, and there is a heavy traffic of applications. Currently, 20 percent of
eastside youth cross school catchment boundaries daily, but only 3.5 percent
on the westside move in the opposite direction (McMahon 2007). As a result
eastside secondary schools have enrolments below capacity while westside
schools are full, indeed above capacity (Steffenhagen 2003).
The Trade in University Credentials
The search for educational achievement employs a range of service provid-
ers and leads to distinctive spatial circuits, across town and between conti-
nents (Butcher 2004; Waters 2005, 2006). The eventual prize from the
perspective of transnational families is a western degree that will appreciate
in value when traded as an educational credential in East Asia, for a degree
from a well-known western university confers enhanced cultural capital
upon its owner. Moreover, as educational networks thicken between top
North American universities and corporate employers in East Asia, so
graduates of institutions like the University of British Columbia (UBC) or the
University of Toronto find themselves in the favourable position of being
