Colleges and institutes play a lead role in strengthening regional capacity to innovate and work with industry partners to enhance competitiveness in the sectors and communities they serve. They conduct leading-edge applied research projects with industry partners to provide market ready solutions.
Whether it’s the creation of a rapid oil containment cling pad to clean up small scale oil or fuel spills, the development of intelligent textiles to meet consumer specific needs, or building award winning cutting edge web technology, colleges and institutes help small- and medium-sized businesses (SMEs) innovate and grow by focusing on improvements in technologies, processes, products and services.
The Government of Canada’s Tri-Council College and Community Innovation (CCI) Program administered by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council in collaboration with the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council and the Canadian Institutes of Health Research is making a real difference in growing the capacity of colleges and institutes to engage in industry-driven applied research and providing SMEs with the expertise required to be more innovative and productive.
Graduate school, the job market, the tenure track, and every other stage in an academic career are so fraught with challenge that you cannot afford to dawdle too long on foolish ventures or waste time holding out for perfection when "pretty darn good" will do.
The first supreme hurdle — the one that scares off many potential academics and cripples the progress of others — is, of course, the dissertation. What counts as a dissertation and how long you should take to complete it vary across disciplines, institutions, and committees. But that you must complete it — and that others must approve it before you can move on — is essential.
One of the sadder conversations I have had in my 15 years of writing about academic careers is, unfortunately, a common one. It usually happens when I’m at a workshop or a conference and people approach me who are enduring a rocky patch in graduate school, on the job hunt, or on the tenure track. At some point I will ask them, "How are you using your dissertation to move your career forward?"
Search committees have a list of six to 10 usual questions they ask every candidate interviewing to be a department chair or dean. There is the icebreaker question ("What attracts you about joining us here at Prairie Home University?"), the leadership question ("How do you deal with conflict?"), and the fund-raising question ("What is the largest private gift you have asked for and
received?").
But of all the questions asked and answered, the one that has proved to be the most complex is the diversity
question.
With a mandate to prepare students for the labour market, ‘communication’ figures prominently among the essential employability skills that Ontario’s colleges are expected to develop in students prior to graduation. As a result, many colleges have instituted measures to help shore up the skills of students who are admitted to college yet who do not possess the expected ‘college-level English’ proficiency. Several have addressed this challenge by admitting these students into developmental communication classes, which are designed to build their skills to the expected college level.
Vocational education and training are highly valued by many. The European Ministers for Vocational Education and Training, the European Social Partners and the European Commission have issued in 2010 the Bruges Communiqué, which describes the global vision for VET in Europe 2020. In this vision, vocational skills and competencies are considered as important as academic skills and competencies. VET is expected to play an important role in achieving two Europe 2020 headline
targets set in the education field: a) reduce the rate of early school leavers from education to less than 10 percent;
b) increase the share of 30 to 40 years old having completed tertiary or equivalent education to at least 40 percent. However, there is limited hard evidence that VET can improve education and labour market outcomes. The few existing studies yield mixed results partly due to differences in the structure and quality of VET across countries.
Arguably, the greatest barrier to the academic development and functioning of Ontario's twenty-two Colleges of Applied Arts and Technology (CAATs) is the hostile and suspicion laden relationship which exists between management and the union which represents the academic staff of the CAATs - the Ontario Public Service Employees Union (OPSEU). This was the conclusion of the commission on workload in the CAATs which I chaired in 1985 (IARC, 1985) and was corroborated in a study of CAAT governance by a Special Adviser to the Minister of Colleges and Universities the following year (Pitman, 1986). An indication of the degree of concern felt by the Ontario Government regarding management union relations in the CAATs is that the largest (in terms of time and resources) public commission on the CAATs to date has been the Colleges Collective
Bargaining Commission (Gandz, 1988).
Discussions of Canada’s so-called “skills gap” have reached a fever pitch. Driven by conflicting reports and data, the conversation shows no signs of abating. On the one hand, economic indicators commonly used to identify gaps point to problems limited to only certain occupations (like health occupations) and certain provinces (like Alberta) rather than to a general skills crisis. On the other hand, employers continue to report a mismatch between the skills they need in their workplaces and those possessed by job seekers, and to voice concern that the postsecondary system is not graduating students with the skills they need.
Discussions of Canada’s so-called “skills gap” have reached a fever pitch. Driven by conflicting reports and data, the conversation shows no signs of abating. On the one hand, economic indicators commonly used to identify gaps point to problems limited to only certain occupations (like health occupations) and certain provinces (like Alberta) rather than to a general skills crisis. On the other hand, employers continue to report a mismatch between the skills they need in their workplaces and those possessed by job seekers, and to voice concern that the postsecondary system is not graduating students with the skills they need.
It’s October and the requests are starting to pile up. They’re multiplying so fast they feel like an anvil-weight of duty perpetually hanging over your head. They refuse to dissipate as the semester progresses, no matter how well you schedule your time or keep track of deadlines. And the worst part is: The sheer amount of work required to meet these demands goes hidden, uncredited, and unsupported.
We are referring to the mountain of requests that some faculty members receive to write letters of reference for students.
In any Ph.D. job search, if there is an application process, you should read the instructions before you do anything,writes Natalie Lundsteen. You should take your time, be thoughtful and follow directions.
Last year I wrote about the role of confidentiality in presidential searches. There is an understandable need to protect the privacy of candidates, especially in the early stages of a search. However, once the search committee decides on the list of finalists, the need for transparency should outweigh concerns for secrecy to protect the candidates. Yet, recent events suggest that some governing boards actually are moving in the opposite direction and taking extreme steps to prevent the campus community from learning the names of those being considered as their future president.
If you’re like most academics, you either negotiate a job offer poorly, or you don’t negotiate at all.
As graduate career counselors at a large research university, we work with numerous Ph.D.’s applying for academic jobs. Many of them know how to craft a persuasive cover letter and a compelling CV. They know how to prepare for an interview. But when the job offer comes, they are fairly clueless about what to do next, so clueless that they don’t understand what they are sacrificing — in money, time, and resources — by failing to negotiate.
For academics, November through March are perhaps the most emotionally taxing months of the year. Not only are we dealing with holiday stress while preparing for the end of one semester and the start of another, we also have an omnipresent and oppressive awareness of the faculty job market.
Somehow higher education has chosen the winter months — when seasonal affective disorders are most pronounced — as the perfect moment to decide the professional fate of thousands of Ph.D.s.
For the past 18 years, I have worked at the same university. I see some distinct advantages in that — most notably, that I haven’t had to look for another job in all that time. There is also something to be said for avoiding the pains of relocating. And staying put has allowed me to establish really rewarding ties with the surrounding community.
But there are also serious problems for any academic who pursues a faculty career in one place. As my Twitter friend John Warner recently noted, perhaps the most common way for professors to get a raise is to apply for a job elsewhere. Then, if you get a job offer, you take it to administrators at your current campus and try to get them to match the salary and benefits you would receive if you changed jobs.
Twenty-one-year old Christian McCrave feels like he did his part.
He got good grades in high school and completed a four-year degree at the University of Guelph in southwestern Ontario. He studied mechanical engineering, in part because he thought it would land him a job.
It hasn't.
"I actually thought that coming out of school that I would be a commodity and someone would want me," McCrave said. "But instead, I got hit with a wall of being not wanted whatsoever in the industry."
McCrave says he believed in the unwritten promise of a post-secondary education: work hard at school, and you'll end up with a good and stable job.
Now, he's not so sure.
The first initiative of its kind in an Ontario University
The Nipissing University Promise Program will support you through all aspects of the University journey. Newly admitted and transfer students with less than 30 transfer credits enrolled in the Promise Program will have an advisor to help navigate each step of your academic and co-curricular involvement at Nipissing — the transition into academic studies, life on campus as a Laker, and career development.
What is the NU Promise?
Nipissing invites you to return, tuition free, for up to 30 additional credits* if 6 months after completing your 4-year undergraduate degree program with a 70% GPA and all required elements of the program, you have not secured career-related employment.
There is a growing body of research demonstrating that there have been major changes in the work and working conditions of university teachers in many countries over the last few decades. In some cases this has led to the increasing employment of non-full-time university instructors, and questions have been raised, especially in the United States, concerning the working conditions of part-time faculty and the implications of these changes on educational quality. The number of full-time faculty at Ontario universities has not increased at the same pace as the massive growth in student enrolment, raising questions about whether universities have employed non-full-time faculty in larger numbers and whether the balance between full-time and non-full-time instructors is changing. However, very little empirical research has been conducted on non-full-time instructors in Ontario. This study offers a preliminary exploration of the issue by addressing four key questions
Demographics, globalization and technological change are transforming Canada's labour market. Workers are looking for jobs, businesses can't seem to find the skilled people they need and the game-changing disruptive tech – from artificial intelligence to machine learning – is still at an early stage. As baby boomers leave the labour force and technology becomes more sophisticated, the skills challenges will only intensify.
The changing nature of work will create additional challenges for young Canadians who are already experiencing suboptimal labour market outcomes. Precarious youth employment is on the rise, as jobs for young people are increasingly contractual or temporary. Work in the "gig" economy is increasing, too, and will likely continue in the decades to come.
I got a job offer. Yay! But I only got one offer, and I’m a brand new Ph.D., so I assume I don’t really have the standing to negotiate anything. That’s only for people who have competing offers or amazing records, right?
This is one of the most common misunderstandings about negotiating. Every candidate has the potential to negotiate elements of a job offer. That’s true even if you have no competing offer, and are a brand new Ph.D. The only reason ever to hesitate on this front is if you’ve picked up red flags about the institution being one that possibly rescinds offers.