Grads without a licence stalled

Employers often want students coming out of school to drive

Graduating students often don't have a driver’s licence due to the high cost of driving and this is negatively affecting their employment opportunities, even for non-driving related jobs.

Langara student, Sumeet Gupta, said, “I’d rather use transit because it’s so expensive. I just purchased my insurance a few weeks ago. It went up by almost a thousand dollars and I was scared.”

The Mercer Cost of Living survey ranked Vancouver the most expensive Canadian city this year. The average student in B.C. graduates with debt, linked to rising costs of living in the province. With the U-Pass B.C. student transit program, however, many South Vancouver students manage to commute to school reliably.

The Insurance Corporation of British Columbia insures the 3.2 million Canadians who are required to have basic coverage through them. In September ICBC reduced their subsidies for rates on new drivers. Joanna Linsangan, a communications specialist with ICBC, said, “the old model wasn’t fair”, to those who had, “taken the steps to get in Vancouver and said that he has seen a drop in driving students since 2003 when ICBC regulations changed to no longer allow a learners knowledge test and behind the wheel test to be within a day of each other. Vakili said, “if the youth wants to get their license it takes three years… it’s a slowdown of the system”.

Adding another financial barrier for students entering job markets has adverse effects for Langara College and other educational institutions pressed to come up with employment statistics.