Canada needs skills of all kinds to remain competitive in the global economy. Today’s students are the workforce of tomorrow, and their education will shape Canada’s future prosperity. Graduates across all disciplines are reaping the rewards of a university education. They’re armed with the hands-on learning experience, entrepreneurial spirit and interdisciplinary skills that will help them succeed in an evolving labour market.
Beware reliance on teaching excellence framework metrics, says Claire Taylor
U of T responds to a rise in mental health needs on campus.
September 1987 and Blaine Favel was sitting in a lecture hall at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ont., a long way from his home on Poundmaker Cree Nation, northwest of Saskatoon. Already he had an advocate’s leanings honed from growing up in a family of chiefs and protected by the thick skin he’d developed facing racial intolerance in Saskatchewan. So when his professor opened her lecture on property law with the pronouncement that all land in Canada belonged to the Queen, Mr. Favel’s hand shot up. “I asked her, ‘How did the Queen get the land?’”
The question left the rookie professor so flustered that she cancelled the rest of the class to reconsider her curriculum. Some students hissed at Mr. Favel, but he had made his point. When class resumed the next day, the professor began by teaching about aboriginal title.
According to the 2011 National Household Survey (NHS), immigrants accounted for 21% of Canada’s overall population, and among those who immigrated to Canada between 2001 and 2011, 41% held a bachelor’s degree or higher. Yet immigrants are less likely than the Canadian-born to be employed, and those who are employed are more likely to be overqualified relative to their occupation. They are also less likely to be working in an occupation that matches their field of study. The degree to which immigrants experience these disadvantages varies according to how long they have been living in Canada, with more established immigrants (those who have lived in Canada 10 years or more) showing higher employment rates and education-to-occupation match rates than immigrants who have not been in Canada as long.
ALTHOUGH WE KNOW THAT SEXUAL VIOLENCE OFTEN GOES UNREPORTED, RESEARCH
INDICATES THAT THERE ARE 460,000 SEXUAL ASSAULTS IN CANADA EACH YEAR. FOR
EVERY 1000 SEXUAL ASSAULTS, ONLY 33 ARE EVER REPORTED TO THE POLICE; 12 RESULT
IN CHARGES LAID; ONLY 6 ARE PROSECUTED AND ONLY 3 LEAD TO A CONVICTION.
Very few reach the courts and far too many survivors don’t access support and counselling. This means that survivors aren’t getting the help that they need, and perpetrators of sexual violence are not being held accountable.
Why? Because too many of us have attitudes towards women, men, relationships and rape that are sexist, misogynist and often just plain wrong.
Over the past few years, Canadian universities have been at the forefront of institutional changes that identify Aboriginal people, internationalization, and pedagogical change as key areas for revision. Most universities’ strategic planning documents cite, at least to varying degrees, these three goals. Institutions have facilitated these changes by supporting new programs, teaching centres, and course redevelopment. While much attention has been given to those goals individually, it is rarely considered how these commitments converge in particular course offerings. This article considers the connections among Indigenous, global, and pedagogical goals by examining undergraduate comparative Indigenous studies courses, some pedagogical challenges that arise in those courses, and some strategies I have developed in meeting those challenges. Based in auto-pedagogy and a critical analysis of existing and emerging pedagogical frameworks, this article uses key concepts from
Indigenous epistemologies, knowledge translation, and Sue Crowley’s (1997) levels of analysis to propose “knowledge liaisons” as a teaching model that addresses these challenges.
As a minority group on university campuses, the unique needs of mature students can be easily
overlooked. It is important that the term “mature students” does not disguise the heterogeneity of this group: “…it
is erroneous to speak of ‘the adult learner’ as if there is a generic adult that can represent all adults.”1 However,
amongst this varied group of students, there are common concerns that they share. This policy sets out students’
priorities in increasing the visibility of mature students on campus as well as optimizing their educational
experience.
Mature students need more recognition of the different hurdles they face in achieving success. These can
include situational barriers like a lack of time, lack of money, health issues, or dependant care,2 as well as
attitudinal or dispositional barriers, including the fear of failure or alienation. Lastly, they also face systemic
barriers such as restrictive course offerings and availability of instructors or support services outside of regular
business hours.3
NEW YORK, Jan. 13, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Today, The Jed Foundation (JED) and the Steve Fund, two leading mental health organizations, announced a joint plan to provide colleges and universities with recommended practices for improving support for the mental health and emotional well-being of America's college students of color. The announcement is accompanied by the release of new data showing the urgency of improving mental health support for this population.
For many years, critics of the SAT have cited a verbal question involving the word "regatta" as an example of how the test may favor wealthier test-takers, who also are more likely to be white. It's been a long time since the regatta question was used -- and the College Board now has in place a detailed process for testing all questions and potential ques questions that may favor one group of students over another.
Welland, Ont.-based Niagara College offers tourism, hospitality and business courses at its campus in Taif, which opened in 2014, while Ottawa's Algonquin College offers 10 programs, including business, accounting and electrical engineering technician, at a campus opened in 2013 in the city of Jazan.
The Local 242 OPSEU rep said faculty members are uncomfortable with the school's association in Saudi Arabia, a country with a "horrible" human rights record, he said. Ramkissoonsingh said staff has been against the Saudi expansion since day one, and have continued to feel uncomfortable as their course material is taught at the segregated campus.
Two years ago, Niagara College successfully bid to open a campus in Saudi Arabia. At the time, the school said they expected an annual injection of $8 million to the college budget, said Ramkissoonsingh.
Public education must serve the public and so it’s important to understand public perceptions of their education systems. This is CEA’s fourth such report and is based on a survey of over 2,400 Canadians between January and May 2007.
Recommendations for Documentation Standards and Guidelines for Post-Secondary Students with Mental Health Disabilities
A project funded by the Ontario Ministry of Training, Colleges and Universities' Mental Health Innovation Fund
Conversations with 14 sitting college and university presidents reveal a belief that the “busines s model” of higher education today is irrevocably altered, and that presidents and their senior staff leaders must take bold, creative
approaches to secure their schools’ futures. The following report summarizes seven key themes we heard during candid one-on-one interviews with these leaders about how leadership is changing in higher education; it also presents concrete suggestions for how presidents and their administrative peers can reshape their roles and strategies to help their institutions thrive in a dramatically different academic
For college and university presidents, the process of apologizing after high-profile missteps can seem to take as long as a tortoise walking a mile.
As a result, the actions Wednesday of University of California, Irvine, Chancellor Howard Gillman stand out as noteworthy. Days after news broke that the university revoked admission offers from 499 students, Chancellor Howard Gillman issued a public statement offering a personal apology. The university would admit all accepted students except for those who dropped below its academic standards, he said.
The relative speed and decisiveness with which Gillman acted raise the question of why more university presidents don’t step in so swiftly. Higher education’s recent history is littered with instances of leaders who seemingly hesitated to offer forceful apologies. Instead of pleasing the public by uttering two little words and a promise to fix
things, such presidents have been seen as incompetent, stonewalling or hemming and hawing.
Human capital is key for economic growth. Not only is it linked to aggregate economic performance but also to each individual’s labour market outcomes. However, a skilled population is not enough to achieve high and inclusive growth, as skills need to be put into productive use at work. Thanks to the availability of measures of both the proficiency and the use of numerous types of skills, the Survey of Adult Skills offers a unique opportunity to advance knowledge in this area and this paper presents and discusses evidence on both these dimensions with a particular focus on their implications for labour market policy. This paper explores the role played in the labour market by skill proficiency in the areas of literacy, numeracy and problem solving in technology-rich environments. It also shows how skills use, not only proficiency, affects a number
of key labour market phenomena, such as the gender wage gap. Finally, the paper combines information on skill proficiency, educational attainment, skill use and qualification requirements to construct indicators of qualification and skills mismatch and to explore their causes and consequences.
A friend recently was attempting to describe for me the purpose of a committee devoted to studying public education on which he sits. In a sense, he began, all we’re trying to do is “wrap our brains around these utterly complex matters.” His point is well taken, especially when one reads, for example, a report such as the one my colleague David Steiner prepared for the Bertelsmann Foundation, “Educational Achievement and Reform Strategies in the United States of America,” (2001) in which, after pages of truly elegant prose, he concluded that much of public education is really a mess.
The idea of “productivity” in higher education is becoming a concern for some policymakers and observers of Ontario’s universities. This interest is fuelled by the province’s challenging deficit situation, which has put a premium on “doing more
with less”. Productivity is featured in the Government of Ontario’s recent discussion paper, Strengthening Ontario’s Centres of Creativity, Innovation, and Knowledge, and was a prominent focus of the Ministry of Training, Colleges, and Universities
strategic mandate agreement process.
The increases in tuition and fee prices in 2015-16 were, like the increases in the two preceding years, relatively small by historical standards. However, the very low rate of general inflation makes this year’s increases in college prices larger in real terms than those of 2014-15 and 2013-14. Significantly, and perhaps counter to public impressions, price increases are not accelerating over time. However, the average published tuition and fee price of a full-time year at a public four-year institution is 40% higher, after adjusting for inflation, in 2015-16 than it was in 2005-06.The average published price is 29%
higher in the public two-year sector and 26% higher in the private nonprofit four-year sector than a decade ago.
After putting in the time, money and energy to complete a degree, it can be extremely discouraging to realize you no longer want to work in that industry. If you spent the better part of four years in a classroom only to learn you don’t want to pursue the field you’re now qualified for, what do you do? Most people don’t have the time or money to go back to school and start over again — but don’t fret. There are steps to take when trying to change career paths to something not directly associated with your degree. While making the switch may be difficult, it’s not impossible. The following steps will help push you in the direction you want to go.