Rex Murphy is a Canadian icon, and also one of the brightest minds the country has ever produced. The popular host of CBC Radio’s weekly national call in show, Cross County Checkup, has been taking the country’s temperature for more than two decades and recently chose Algonquin College’s Waterfront Campus in Pembroke to tackle the question of whether young people were getting the education they need?
Since his university years at Memorial, Murphy has never shied away from a candid discussion on education. Another Canadian master orator, fiery Newfoundland Premier Joey Smallwood once went on television to tell Murphy, then a student council leader, to never come back to his home province after a controversial speech he had made in Quebec that questioned the Premier’s promise of free tuition for Memorial students.
Murphy called it a “sham” because of the conditions placed by the government on who was eligible for free schooling, raising the ire of Smallwood, who used his most colourful language to chastise the youngster. The public battle between the opinionated student and Newfoundland’s father of Confederation put Murphy into the national media spotlight for the first time in his life, and set the stage for a long career as one of Canada’s top political commentators.
Growing up in Newfoundland, Murphy was a gifted student, completing high school at the age of 15 by skipping two primary grades, and graduating with an English Degree from Memorial University at only 19 years of age. He reads constantly, up to eight hours a day, but it’s not his academic prowess that has made him a household name in Canada. It’s his delicious vocabulary, his quick wit, and his ability to tell it the way it is!
That’s what Murphy did during his Algonquin visit. The host cleverly interviewed several Algonquin College students, employers, parents and educators, creating a rich dialogue that essentially challenged Canada’s post-secondary system to do more to help our young people succeed in today’s competitive job market.
He celebrated success stories when students talked about how co-operative education programs had helped them gain meaningful work experience or how employers had worked with the college to set up programming to match their labour market needs. But he also lamented the high cost of education for some students and the need to help them make the right choice, citing university students that had enrolled in college after struggling to find work in their field upon graduation.
Rex Murphy has done what he always does. He has started a conversation, or in this case, deepened a conversation. We are grateful he chose Algonquin College’s new Waterfront Campus in Pembroke to get Canada talking about post-secondary education.
Watch Jamie Bramburger’s sit down interview with Rex Murphy
Posted by: Jamie Bramburger, Manager, Community and Student Affairs
