Ontario is in the process of designing a plan for postsecondary education (PSE) to follow Reaching Higher. The new plan will contain an array of policy goals and strategies, and some consideration must be given to a tuition fee policy. The current tuition fee policy was slated to end in 2009-10, but was extended by two years. A new framework must be in place for the 2012-13 academic year. This paper presents options for a new tuition framework. We do not rank the options or make a recommendation, believing that this decision is appropriately a political one be made by government.
Much has been written about tuition fees and tuition fee policy. Our contribution is to provide some context for the choices ahead. One perspective comes from recent research on higher education. There is an emerging consensus in the Canadian higher education literature that can help evaluate current policies and point to possible new directions. This body of knowledge is frequently missing from tuition policy discussions, either because it is not widely understood or, occasionally, because the implications run counter to long-held positions.
The other perspective is historical. Ontario’s choices will be shaped in good measure by the policies already in place and the priorities underlying them. Specifically, postsecondary education will continue to be viewed as a key contributor to the province’s economic and social goals, and expectations for the sector are likely to continue to focus on accessibility, quality, and accountability.
We begin by describing briefly the current tuition framework and pressures for change. This discussion makes clear that tuition fee policy is not just about tuition fees; it is equally about student financial assistance polices and about the revenue needs of
colleges and universities. Setting a new fee policy requires full appreciation of the complex interplay among these three factors.
We note that, contrary to often-expressed views, Canadian researchers find no consistent correlation between tuition fees and PSE participation and persistence rates. Part of the explanation for this result is that average private rates of return to
postsecondary education compare very favourably to those available from purely financial investments. Increases in tuition rates of the magnitude witnessed in Canada in recent decades apparently have not been large enough to alter this situation.
Another part of the explanation is that non-financial barriers loom large for some individuals.
Private rates of return are relatively high in part because governments have chosen to subsidize PSE in various ways. The public debate frequently focuses on average tuition fees as reported by Statistics Canada. Yet this focus is misleading. For many
students, particularly those with demonstrated financial need, the actual costs of PSE @ Issue Paper No. 6 • Tuition Fee Policy Options for Ontario
2 – Higher Education Quality Council of Ontario are substantially lower once grants, subsidized loans, tax credits and debt relief are taken into account. These government policies notwithstanding, there are still groups that are underrepresented in PSE in Ontario and it is apparent that financial barriers remain part of the explanation. Other factors include lack of understanding of the relative benefits and costs of postsecondary education and decisions made early in the schooling process that preclude a successful transition to PSE.
There is an emerging consensus in the literature on how to design support policies to offset financial barriers. Ontario has many of these features in place, but there are options for improvement. These changes should be considered no matter what new
tuition policy emerges, but it is especially important to do so if the new policy contains ongoing fee increases.
The process for deciding on a tuition policy requires simultaneous and interdependent decisions on three key PSE policy variables: the revenue needs of the colleges and universities in each year of the planning period, a tuition fee framework that balances contributions to these revenue needs with effects on accessibility, and the public funds available each year for operating grants plus contributions to student financial assistance.
Four types of tuition frameworks are presented and evaluated for strengths and weaknesses within the Ontario context: capped tuition fees, a shares approach, constrained deregulation, and full deregulation. We look briefly at several variant of fee caps: a rollback, a freeze, tying increases to the CPI, and retaining the status quo policy of a maximum allowable increase of 5%. We argue that there is no obvious cap figure. Any choice involves a balancing of revenue needs, accessibility, and fiscal capacity.
The same point applies to proposals to adopt a shares approach wherein tuition revenue is set at some portion of institutional operating revenue. There is no obvious share to aim at. Governments over many years, for a variety of reasons, chose to
increase the relative share of PSE operating costs borne by students. These decisions were made in conjunction with a host of other economic and social policy adjustments;
for example, tuition credits. Any decision to alter this trend must take this broader historical perspective into account.
The choice of a new fee policy must also involve consideration of the pros and cons of relaxing or even removing the current distinctions of allowable fee increases among programs. A constrained deregulation approach would remove these distinctions among programs but retain an overall fee cap. Complete deregulation would remove the distinction and the arbitrary cap, although it is perfectly compatible with a scheme to tax back a portion of fee increases for need-based financial assistance.
The programs featured in this research represent the two main approaches to international teaching assistant (ITA) preparation in Canada. The first is a traditional or general Teaching Assistant Training Program (TATP), in which ITAs participate in twenty hours of preparation for teaching in an interdisciplinary cohort, together with Canadian graduate students. The second program, ‘Teaching in the Canadian Classroom’ (TCC), is a training program designed especially for ITAs. ITAs participate in twenty hours of preparation for teaching in an interdisciplinary cohort, but only with other ITAs. Both programs include video-recorded microteaching sessions, during which teaching assistants (TAs) receive detailed feedback on a ten-minute lesson that they teach. Both programs also include modules on effective teaching techniques. What makes the ‘Teaching in the Canadian Classroom’ program unique is that it includes a substantial intercultural communication
component. This component addresses cultural differences in the role of instructors and students, expectations for student engagement in Canadian classrooms, and communication strategies that may help ITAs bridge cultural differences in communication styles with their students and their supervisors.
Aboriginal people in Canada have long understood the role building healthy, thriving communities.
Despite significant cultural and historical differences, Canada’s First Nations, Inuit and Métis people share a vision of learning as a holistic, lifelong process.
Increasingly, governments, Aboriginal organizations and communities are making decisions and developing policies that reflect a better understanding and awareness of an Aboriginal perspective on learning. However, the effectiveness of these
decisions still typically rely on conventional measurement approaches that offer a limited—and indeed incomplete—view of the state of Aboriginal learning in Canada. Current measurement approaches typically focus on the discrepancies in educational attainment between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal youth (in particular, high-school completion rates) and often overlook the many aspects of learning that are integral to an Aboriginal perspective on learning. As a result, conventional measurement approaches rarely reflect the specific needs and aspirations of Aboriginal people.
This situation is not unique to Canada. In a recent report, the United Nations stated “it is of utmost importance that Governments, indigenous peoples, donors and civil society organizations work together to ensure that special [measurement] approaches are devised to coincide with the aspirations of indigenous peoples. Without a comprehensive understanding of Aboriginal people's perspective on learning and a culturally appropriate framework for measuring it, the diverse aspirations and needs of First Nations, Inuit and Métis across Canada will continue to be misinterpreted and misunderstood.
One of my primary research interests is the design of higher education systems, a subject on which I did background papers for recent commissions on postsecondary education in Ontario and British Columbia. I am interested in both factors that influence the design of higher education systems and in the implications of different system designs for accessibility, quality, innovation, and the effectiveness of higher education in meeting societal needs. An example of analysis of the design of a higher education system is found in a recent book that I co-authored (Clark, Moran, Skolnik, and Trick, 2009). We concluded that the design
employed in Ontario for the provision of baccalaureate education is inefficient, because it attempts to provide almost all baccalaureate education through a system of publicly funded research universities, the most expensive model for the provision of bachelor’s programs. In our recommendations we emphasized the need for greater institutional differentiation among
providers of baccalaureate credit activity. This would include having a few predominantly teaching universities that concentrate on baccalaureate programming; an open university; and making credit transfer a major function of the colleges.
Social networking use among internet users ages 50 and older has nearly doubled—from 22% to 42% over the past year.
While social media use has grown dramatically across all age groups, older users have been especially enthusiastic over the past year about embracing new networking tools. Although email continues to be the primary way that older users maintain contact with friends, families and colleagues, many users now rely on social network platforms to help manage their daily communications—sharing links, photos, videos, news and status updates with a growing network of contacts.
Half (47%) of internet users ages 50-64 and one in four (26%) users age 65 and older now use social networking sites.
Half of online adults ages 50-64 and one in four wired seniors now count themselves among the Facebooking and LinkedIn masses. That’s up from just 25% of online adults ages 50-64 and 13% of those ages 65 and older who reported social networking use one year ago in a survey conducted in April 2009.
Young adult internet users ages 18-29 continue to be the heaviest users of social networking sites like Facebook and LinkedIn, with 86% saying they use the sites. However, over the past year, their growth paled in comparison with the gains made by older users. Between April 2009 and May 2010, internet users ages 50-64 who said they use a social networking site like MySpace, Facebook or LinkedIn grew 88% and those ages 65 and older grew 100% in their adoption of the sites, compared with a growth rate of 13% for those ages 18-29.
Remember how you felt during your first semester of teaching? Excited? Nervous? A little over-whelmed? At times you even might have wondered how the school could give you a job with so much responsibility and so little training.
Now you’re a seasoned educator making the move from faculty to administration. And guess what? You’re excited, nervous, and a little overwhelmed. And, once again, you wonder how the school could give you a job with so much responsibility and so little training. Inadequate preparation, unrealistic expectations, and increased workload can create undue stress on faculty members making the transition to department chair or other levels of administration. This special report features 14 articles from Academic Leader newsletter that address many of the challenges faced by new leaders, from establishing a leadership
style to redefining relationships with former peers.
Here are some of the articles you will find in Academic Leadership Development: How to Make a Smooth Transition from Faculty to Administrator:
• Look Before You Leap: Transitions from Faculty to Administration
• Translating Teaching Skills to Leadership Roles
• The First 1,000 Steps: Walking the Road from Academic to Administrator
• Why New Department Chairs Need Coaching
• 10 Recommendations toward Effective Leadership
This report will help new administrators navigate the potential minefields and find their
voice when it comes to leading effectively. It also may remind experienced leaders what it
was like that first year in hopes that they might reach out to help make someone else’s
transition a little easier.
Rob Kelly
Editor
Academic Leader
Walk into any college classroom and you’ll likely see some students concentrating intently on their note taking or on watching the instructor’s presentation. You’ll also likely see some students texting on their phones, checking Facebook
on their laptops or whispering with their neighbors. And perhaps some students have that distant look of daydreaming or the droopy head that signals a nap.
All of these behaviors reflect what students have come to expect while in the classroom: slide after slide of content, with barely enough time to write it all down, much less understand it on the spot. Even raising a hand for clarification can sometimes be out of the question if the instructor has already moved on or if a student is too embarrassed to ask in front of the entire class. And so students cope by either scrambling to keep up during class or by tuning out and hoping to catch up on the content later.
Looking out at our students in classrooms today, with their texting, Facebook updates, Instagram messages, e-mail checking, Google searches, and tweeting, it’s hard to imagine what was so distracting for college students more than 100 years ago when James made this statement. Yet, even then, he recognized the propensity of the mind to constantly seek novel material, to leap from thought to image to belief to fear to desire to judgment and back again — all following one’s own quirky train of thought resembling the chaotic movements of a swarm of bees around a hive. Time passes through a warped dimension when the student finally returns to some semblance of attention, unaware of all the cognitive detours taken between points A and B. And that’s just the internal process, prompted by nothing in particular. How much more distraction is invited by today’s mobile technology?
In November 2013, the Ontario Undergraduate Student Alliance (OUSA) asked students to comment on their experience with summer and in-study employment. Of particular interest were: the number of jobs students were working during these terms;
whether or not these opportunities were within a student’s field of study; and whether they positively impacted their academic performance.
Results of OUSA’s 2013 Ontario Post-Secondary Student Survey (OPSSS) were further broken down based on institution and field of study for questions of particular interest. This was done to easily compare the responses from these distinct groups to
see how consistent the undergraduate employment experience was across academic disciplines and universities.
Introducing the drivers for whole system reform
‘Whole system reform’ is the name of the game and ‘drivers’ are those policy and strategy levers that have the least and best chance of driving successful reform. A ‘wrong driver’ then is a deliberate policy force that has little chance of achieving the desired result, while a ‘right driver’ is one that ends up achieving better measurable results for students. Whole system reform
is just that – 100 per cent of the system – a whole state, province, region or entire country. This paper examines those drivers typically chosen by leaders to accomplish reform, critiques their inadequacy, and offers an alternative set of drivers that have been proven to be more effective at accomplishing the desired goal, which I express as … the moral imperative of raising the bar (for all students) and closing the gap (for lower performing groups) relative to higher order skills and competencies required to be successful world citizens.
The transformative trends of the past 50 years that have led to a sharp decline in marriage and a rise of new family forms have been shaped by attitudes and behaviors that differ by class, age and race, according to a new Pew Research Center nationwide survey complemented by an analysis of demographic and economic data from the U.S. Census Bureau. A new ―marriage gap‖ in the United States is increasingly aligned with a growing income gap. Marriage, while declining among all groups, remains the norm for adults with a college education and good income but is now markedly less prevalent among those on the lower rungs of the socio-economic ladder. The survey finds that those in this less-advantaged group are as likely as others to want to marry, but they place a higher premium on economic security as a condition for marriage. This is a bar that many may not meet.
The survey also finds striking differences by generation. In 1960, two-thirds (68%) of all twenty-somethings were married. In 2008, just 26% were. How many of today’s youth will eventually marry is an open question. For now, the survey finds that the young are much more inclined than their elders to view cohabitation without marriage and other new family forms — such as same sex marriage and interracial marriage — in a positive light. Even as marriage shrinks, family— in all its emerging varieties — remains resilient. The survey finds that Americans have an expansive definition of what constitutes a family. And the vast majority of adults consider their own family to be the most important, most satisfying element of their lives.
Here is a summary of the key findings of the report:
 The Class-Based Decline in Marriage. About half (52%) of all adults in this country were married in 2008; back in 1960, seven-in-ten (72%) were. This decline has occurred along class lines. In 2008, there was a 16 percentage point gap in marriage rates between college graduates (64%) and those with a high school diploma or less (48%). In 1960, this gap had been just four percentage points (76% vs. 72%). The survey finds that those with a high school diploma or less are just as likely as those with a college degree to say they want to marry. But they place a higher premium than college graduates (38% versus 21%) on financial stability as a very important reason to marry.
. Is Marriage Becoming Obsolete? Nearly four-in-ten survey respondents (39%) say that it is; in 1978 when Time magazine posed this question to registered voters, just 28% agreed. Those most likely to agree include those who are a part of the phenomenon (62% of cohabiting parents) as well as those most likely to be troubled by it (42% of self-described conservatives). Despite these growing uncertainties, Americans are more upbeat about the future of marriage and family (67% say they are optimistic) than about the future of the country’s educational system (50% optimistic), its economic system (46% optimistic) or its morals and ethics (41% optimistic).
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. An Ambivalent Public. The public’s response to changing marital norms and family forms reflects a mix of acceptance and unease. On the troubled side of the ledger: Seven-in-ten (69%) say the trend toward more single women having children is bad for society, and 61% say that a child needs both a mother and father to grow up happily. On the more accepting side, only a minority say the trends toward more cohabitation without marriage (43%), more unmarried couples raising children (43%), more gay couples raising children (43%) and more people of different races marrying (14%) are bad for society. Relatively few say any of these trends are good for society, but many say they make little difference.
. Group Differences. Where people stand on the various changes in marriage and family life depends to some degree on who they are and how they live. The young are more accepting than the old of the emerging arrangements; the secular are more accepting than the religious; liberals are more accepting than conservatives; the unmarried are more accepting than the married; and, in most cases, blacks are more accepting than whites. The net result of all these group differences is a nearly even three-way split among the full public. A third (34%) say the growing variety of family arrangements is a good thing; 29% say it is a bad thing and 32% say it makes little or no difference.
. The Resilience of Families. The decline of marriage has not knocked family life off its pedestal. Three-quarters of all adults (76%) say their family is the most important element of their life; 75% say they are ―very satisfied‖ with their family life, and more than eight-in-ten say the family they live in now is as close as (45%) or closer than (40%) the family in which they grew up. However, on all of these questions, married adults give more positive responses than do unmarried adults.
. The Definition of Family. By emphatic margins, the public does not see marriage as the only path to family formation. Fully 86% say a single parent and child constitute a family; nearly as many (80%) say an unmarried couple living together with a child is a family; and 63% say a gay or lesbian couple raising a child is a family. The presence of children clearly matters in these definitions. If a cohabiting couple has no children, a majority of the public says they are not a family. Marriage matters, too. If a childless couple is married, 88% consider them to be a family.
. The Ties that Bind. In response to a question about whom they would assist with money or care giving in a time of need, Americans express a greater sense of obligation toward relatives—including relatives by way of fractured marriages– than toward best friends. The ranking of relatives aligns in a predictable hierarchy. More survey respondents express an obligation to help out a parent (83% would feel very obligated) or grown child (77%) than say the same about a stepparent (55%) or a step or half sibling (43%). But when asked about one’s best friend, just 39% say they would feel a similar sense of obligation.
. Changing Spousal Roles. In the past 50 years, women have reached near parity with men as a share of the workforce and have begun to outpace men in educational attainment. About six-in-ten wives work today, nearly double the share in 1960. There’s an unresolved tension in the public’s response to these changes. More than six-in-ten (62%) survey respondents endorse the modern marriage in which the husband and wife both work and both take care of the household and children; this is up from 48% in 1977. Even so, the public hasn’t entirely discarded the traditional male breadwinner template for marriage. Some 67% of survey respondents say that in order to be ready for marriage, it’s very important for a man to be able to support his family financially; just 33% say the same about a woman.
. The Rise of Cohabitation. As marriage has declined, cohabitation (or living together as unmarried partners) has become more widespread, nearly doubling since 1990, according to the Census Bureau. In the Pew Research survey, 44% of all adults (and more than half of all adults ages 30 to 49) say they have cohabited at some point in their lives. Among those who have done so, about two-thirds (64%) say they thought of this living arrangement as a step toward marriage.
. The Impact on Children. The share of births to unmarried women has risen dramatically over the past half century, from 5% in 1960 to 41% in 2008. There are notable differences by race: Among black women giving birth in 2008, 72% were unmarried. This compares with 53% of Hispanic women giving birth and 29% of white women. Overall, the share of children raised by a single parent is not as high as the share born to an unwed mother, but it too has risen sharply — to 25% in 2008, up from 9% in 1960. The public believes children of single parents face more challenges than other children — 38% say ―a lot more‖ challenges and another 40% say ―a few more‖ challenges. Survey respondents see even more challenges for children of gay and lesbian couples (51% say they face a lot more challenges) and children of divorce (42% say they face a lot more challenges).
. In Marriage, Love Trumps Money. Far more married adults say that love (93%), making a lifelong commitment (87%) and companionship (81%) are very important reasons to get married than say the same about having children (59%) or financial stability (31%). Unmarried adults order these items the same way. However, when asked if they agree that there is ―only one true love‖ for every person, fewer than three-in-ten (28%) survey respondents say, I do.
On a typical day in 2014, more than 22 million cyberattacks threatened to infiltrate Penn State. Two
attacks targeting the university’s College of Engineering managed to slip past security systems. Thanks to an alert from the FBI, the university investigated the attacks and disconnected the college’s computer network from the Internet for three days while it beefed up security.
In K-12, school districts are constantly launching digital learning initiatives that require large amounts of bandwidth and mobile devices. But many of them don’t address the IT infrastructure beforehand. And that leads to horror stories of the network
slowing to a crawl with students and teachers unable to connect their devices to the Internet due to lack of wireless coverage.
“Infrastructure is one of those things that is not sexy and is not glamorous,” says Susan M. Bearden, director of information technology at Holy Trinity Episcopal Academy in Melbourne, Fla. “I mean, who really wants to hear about switches or bandwidth or choke points in a network? But if you don’t have that infrastructure in place, then you are setting yourself up for failure.”
Unfortunately, education institutions don’t always recognize the tenuous situation they’re in until they fall prey to successful cyberattacks and show-stopping network failures. But it doesn’t have to be that way.
This Center for Digital Education (CDE) Special Report guides education IT leaders through the trends, technologies and tips that will help them build a future-ready infrastructure to carry their institutions through the challenges of life
in the digital age.
Students' relationship with technology is complex. They recognize its value but still need guidance when it comes to better using it for academics. The affinity of undergraduates for multimedia, mobile devices, and multitasking is well documented. What is less well recognized is the circumspect way in which students think about integrating technology into their academic lives, a characteristic of college students that has persisted for many years.
Student wellness is an essential component of academic success in higher education and subsequent opportunities in the labor market. The Ohio State University Office of Student Life’s Student Wellness Center uses a model that includes nine key dimensions of wellness: career, creative, emotional, environmental, financial, intellectual, physical, social and spiritual.
Just as goods, services, products, and daily news gradually become widespread going beyond borders due to mass media, and global free movement, so do scientific publications, books, and academic work. As a result of the mind-blowing developments in publishing industry and communication, a piece of information, comments, or inventions belonging to a nation, country,
university, or an academic ach the furthest country immediately and be shared with other societies and scientists.
An important consequence of intensification of economic, political, and cultural relations among countries is that scientific and educational cooperation has increased. Only 30-40 years ago, there was only a handful of books and articles published abroad
by Turkish scientists, yet today, hundreds of articles are published in magazines, and many books are printed by foreign publishing houses, which gives various nations information on science, arts, sports, politics, education, and inventions in Turkey.
This document attempts to provide useful advice for graduate students, particularly Ph.D. students, just starting out on their research careers at the Autonomous Networks Research Group, Dept. of Electrical Engineering-Systems, USC. It should also be useful for graduate students at other institutions working in similar research areas.
Students with no prior experience often have several misconceptions about the nature of research. For example, they may think that doing research is similar to or requires the same skill as acing courses; that research projects are like homework sets - the advisor will assign well-formulated problems and provide the student with the tools to solve them. Hopefully, this document will help clear some of these misconceptions and help them get started on the right foot in their research.
Many of the pointers here may seem like common sense, but as they say, common sense is by no means common… and very little of it is taught in a classroom.
This is an active document, and as such is subject to modifications. To begin with, I have just listed my main points under each heading. I will be working to convert this into a coherent narrative over the course of the next couple of months.
Some provincial governments are taking notice of and responding to growing public concern over student debt loads, economic and employment uncertainty, and the long-term ramifications being felt by students and their families.
These responses have not resulted in across-the-board fee reductions; provincial governments have largely preferred to go the route of directed assistance measures, either before (two-tiered fee structures or nearly-universal targeted grants or bursaries) or after-the-fact (tax credits, debt caps and loans forgiveness) directed at in-province students as part of a retention strategy, and to mitigate the poor optics of kids being priced out of their local universities. While this does impact in-province affordability, it undermines any commitment to universality because it creates a situation where the only students
who leave the province to pursue a degree are the ones who can afford to.
The increasing number of exceptions and qualifiers makes the system of university finance far more difficult to navigate, and makes it harder to compare provincial policies. Additionally, the system becomes much more unpredictable.
Financial assistance applied in this manner is anything but certain; programs can change or be eliminated at any time, while the only thing students can be relatively certain of is that fees will likely continue to increase.
Within the context of my Ph.D. dissertation, I am interested in (1) the impact of superiors’ management skills and subordinates’ working skills on the building of their (hierarchical) relationship and (2) the impact this hierarchical relationship has upon the mental health of workers (i.e. both superiors and subordinates). Research to date has revealed the potentially negative consequences that hierarchical relationships can have on mental health; thus, for example, Brun, Biron, Martel & Ivers (2003) found that poor relations with the supervisor constitutes a significant risk factor for mental health. Leiter and Maslach (2004) report similar findings, that is to say, that the quality of social interactions at work is a major risk factor for mental health.
The function and role of leadership today is very different than in past decades. Leadership applies to more than just those who supervise others - it is both a privilege and responsibility of each member of a college commu- nity. We are all learners from the moment we enter the world, but we ask you to consider each of us as teachers as well. We are constantly modeling with our actions and inactions, and we have a responsibility...a civic duty...to teach both those who ay and those who are paid to
affiliate with our college.
The proportion of adults in Canada with a post-secondary education is the highest among all OECD countries, and the cost of that education is roughly double the OECD average. Yet, more and more of those degree holders fall behind in the earnings scale. The share of Canadian university graduates who make less than half the national median income is the largest among all OECD countries. Sure, on average it pays to get a post-secondary education, but with the education premium narrowing, the number of low-income outliers is rising. And despite the overwhelming evidence that one’s field of study is the most important factor determining labour market outcomes, today’s students have not gravitated to more financially advantageous fields in a way that reflects the changing reality of the labour market.