This paper reports the results of an analysis of persistence in post-secondary education (PSE) for college students in Ontario based on the extremely rich YITS-B dataset that has been used for other recent studies at the national level. We calculate hazard or transition rates (and cumulative transition rates) with respect to those who i) graduate, ii) switch programs, and
iii) leave PSE (perhaps to return later). We also look at the reasons for switching and leaving, subsequent re-entry rates among leavers, and graduation and persistence rates once switchers and re-entrants are taken into account. These patterns are then probed in more detail using hazard (regression) models where switching and leaving are related to a variety of individual
characteristics, family background, high school outcomes, and early pse experiences. Student pathways are seen to be varied. Perhaps the single most important finding is that the proportion of students who either obtain a degree or continue to be enrolled somewhere in the PSE system in the years after entering a first program remains close to the 80 percent mark for the five years following entry. Seventy-one percent of students graduate within five years of starting, while another 6 percent are still in the PSE system.
A partnership approach - retention framework.
Practical Nursing Diploma
Love it or hate it, social media is no passing fad -- and increasingly it’s intertwined with more traditional academic platforms. Numerous scholars have popular blogs, for example, on which they test out new ideas and share research. Other academics have made names for themselves on Twitter or Facebook -- both to the benefit and detriment of their respective careers.
The purpose of this non-experimental, cross-sectional, descriptive research was to survey faculty and staff perceptions of mentorship in a postsecondary institution in order to determine gaps and strengths in the current mentorship
environment. The anecdotal activities we present reflect our educational practice environment through the work of our Mentorship Team. Data were collected utilizing Zachary’s Mentor Culture Audit tool. The culture building block measured 4.65 on a 7-point Likert scale, suggesting the presence of a weak mentorship culture. However, the infrastructure building block measured only 3.41, showing that organizational resources and supports are below average. We also present eight hallmark category results to further identify strengths and gaps. This is the first assessment of our mentoring culture at an organizational level. Other postsecondary institutions may benefit from formally assessing the gaps in and strengths of their mentorship culture toassist them with acquiring adequate resources to further develop and sustain their mentoring activities.
The rise of online and hybrid courses at the higher education level increases the need for distance
learning infrastructures to nourish online faculty preparedness and student online learning success. One part of the distance learning infrastructure is incorporating the use of educated and trained instructional designers to assist faculty in developing robust and quality online courses. Developing online courses with an instructional designer is a very laborious process, but the results can outweigh the struggles that facultyexplain what is involved in an established six-step course development model for developing, reviewing, and delivering a quality online course.
Media and policy commentary have focused lately on Canadian employers’ apparent inability to find employees with the desired labour market skills. To explore this issue further, HEQCO reviewed and summarized the current discourse surrounding a “skills gap” in The Great Skills Divide: A Review of the Literature and conducted an analysis of Canadian job advertisements geared toward recent postsecondary graduates in Bridging the Divide, Part I: What Canadian Job Ads Said. In the latter publication, 316 job advertisements for entry-level positions requiring postsecondary education were examined to ascertain the education credentials, work experience and essential skills employers were seeking. To follow-up on Bridging the Divide, Part I, the current report analyzes survey responses from 103 employers that posted job advertisements included in the preceding study.
In particular, employers were asked if they had filled the advertised position or, if not, the reasons for being unable to find someone to hire. Those employers that had filled the position were also asked about the successful candidates’ qualifications and performance on the job so far.
Recently, I received an email from a student asking me the name of a writer -- a writer whose book we’d been reading for two weeks. (And discussing in class. And writing about in class.) It was not a textbook, anthology or unusual digital source. It was an old-fashioned printed book containing one play by one writer.
I knew that the student owned the book, because I had seen her with it in class, and in fact, she had told me she was enjoying the reading. However, when it was time for her to do an assignment on the playwright … well, she was stumped. She just didn’t know his name.
I had to explain to her, carefully, and with what I hope was compassion, that if she hadn’t picked up his name in the class discussions so far (or, I was thinking, in the course syllabus and calendar), then she could always try looking on the front cover of the book.
This report focuses on data comparability of scale scores in the Teaching and Learning nternational Survey (TALIS).
Valid cross-cultural comparisons of TALIS data are vital in providing input for evidence-based policy making and in promoting the equity and effectiveness of teacher policies. For this purpose, an investigation of data comparability is a prerequisite for any meaningful cross-cultural comparison.
TALIS involves a large number of countries and economies, and has used rather strict conventional statistical methods to test comparability. Thus, many scales in TALIS do not reach the level of comparability that allows direct comparisons of scale scores. To facilitate the effective data analysis of TALIS and maximise its policy implications, this project: (1) uses a more flexible statistical method to testcomparability, and (2) investigates the level and sources of scale data incomparability.
The Survey of Earned Doctorates, the data source for this report, is an annual census of individuals who receive research doctoral degrees from accredited U.S. academic institutions. The survey is sponsored by six federal agencies: the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, National Endowment for the Humanities, National Institutes of Health, National Science Foundation (NSF), U.S. Department of Agriculture, and U.S. Department of Education. These data are reported in several publications from NSF’s National Center for Science and Engineering Statistics. The most comprehensive and widely cited publication is this report, Doctorate Recipients from U.S. Universities.
This report calls attention to important trends in doctoral education, organized into themes highlighting important questions about doctorate recipients. Online, the reader is invited to explore trends in greater depth through detailed data tables and interactive graphics (www.nsf.gov/statistics/ sed/). Technical notes and other online resources are provided to aid in
interpreting the data. The data tables are available as PDF and Excel files for easy viewing, printing, and downloading.
After one too many students called me by my first name and sent me email that resembled a drunken late-night Facebook post, I took a very fogeyish step. I began attaching a page on etiquette to every syllabus: basic rules for how to address teachers and write polite, grammatically correct emails.
Over the past decade or two, college students have become far more casual in their interactions with faculty members. My colleagues around the country grumble about students’ sloppy emails and blithe informality.
Mark Tomforde, a math professor at the University of Houston who has been teaching for almost two decades, added etiquette guidelines to his website. “When students started calling me by my first name, I felt that was too far, and I’ve got to say something,” he told me. “There were also the emails written like text messages. Worse than the text abbreviations was the level of informality, with no address or signoff.”
Nearly 25,700 full-time Ontario college students received tuition refunds after a five-week strike derailed their semester.
Ontario's Ministry of Advanced Education confirmed Tuesday that 10.3 per cent of Ontario's roughly 250,000 full-time college students asked for, and received, their money back after the strike.
Minister Deb Matthews said the figures are still preliminary and could change in the coming weeks as further numbers are reported by Ontario's 24 colleges.
In recent years, the Higher Education Quality Council of Ontario (HEQCO) has launched several studies that analyze and conceptualize the differentiation of the Ontario postsecondary education system (Weingarten & Deller, 2010; Hicks, Weingarten, Jonker & Liu, 2013; Weingarten, Hicks, Jonker & Liu, 2013). Similarly, in the summer of 2012, the Ontario Ministry of Training, Colleges and Universities (MTCU) initiated several projects to identify ways to drive innovation and improve the productivity of the postsecondary sector.
Within this context, in June 2013 HEQCO began to look at what it called ‘the proliferation of public policy schools.’ Anecdotally, there has been much discussion about the rise of public policy programs. Findings from a preliminary scan of existing graduate public policy programs and their establishment dates demonstrated that there has been a proliferation in the number of public policy programs in Canada, starting with Carleton University in 1953 and ending with the University of Calgary in 2011. In roughly the past decade, there has been a one-third increase in the number of such graduate programs. This trend mirrors what has happened elsewhere, in particular in the United States.
For many faculty members, instructors, practitioners, administrators and policy makers, the language used to describe and discuss online and flexible learning is confusing. What on earth is a “flipped classroom”? What is the difference between “blended learning” and “fully online” learning? Why do some programs not have “instructors” but do have “mentors, coaches and guides”? It can be confusing.
Let’s look at the language of online and flexible learning and help understand what is being said when key terms are being used.
One of the important questions to consider in a review of policy for postsecondary education is what kind of system do we need. To provide a reasonably complete answer to that question would require addressing many different dimensions of postsecondary
education including structures, processes, and relationships. In this paper, I will concentrate on two important and closely related subsidiary questions within the broader question of what kind of system we need. Those subsidiary questions are what is the most appropriate mix of different types of postsecondary institutions, and what should be their relationships with one another?1 As those are pretty large questions, within them my principal focus will be even narrower, on the balance and relationship between universities and community colleges.
The more than one million undergraduate students heading to Canadian universities this fall will benefit from innovative approaches to teaching and learning, including more opportunities for experiential learning. After graduation, they’ll enjoy
higher earnings and better employment outcomes than those without degrees.
ABSTRACT
During the past two decades community colleges and technical institutes in several jurisdictions, including parts of Canada, the
United States and Australia, have been given the authority to award bachelor degrees. One of the motivations for this addition
to the mandate of these institutions is to improve opportunities for bachelor degree attainment among groups that historically
have been underserved by universities. This article addresses the equity implications of extending the authority to award
baccalaureate degrees to an additional class of institutions in Canada’s largest province, Ontario. The article identifies the
conditions that need to be met for reforms of this type to impact positively on social mobility and inequality, and it describes the
kinds of data that are necessary to determine the extent to which those conditions are met. Based on interviews with students,
faculty, and college leaders, it was found that regulatory restrictions on intra-college transfer from sub-baccalaureate to
baccalaureate programs and lack of public awareness of a new type of bachelor degree may be limiting the social impact of this
reform.
Previous research has shown that fathers taking some time off work around childbirth, especially periods of leave of 2 or more weeks, are more likely to be involved in childcare related activities than fathers who do not do so. Furthermore, evidence suggests that children with fathers who are ‘more involved’ perform better during the early years than their peers with less involved fathers. This paper analyses data of four OECD countries — Australia; Denmark; United Kingdom; United States — to describe how leave policies may influence father’s behaviours when children are young and whether their involvement translates into positive child cognitive and behavioural outcomes. This analysis shows that fathers’ leave, father’s involvement and child development are related. Fathers who take leave, especially those taking two weeks or more, are more likely to carry out childcare related activities when children are young. This study finds some evidence that children with highly involved fathers tend to perform better in terms of cognitive test scores. Evidence on the association between fathers’ involvement and behavioural outcomes was however weak. When data on different types of childcare activities was available, results suggest that the kind of involvement matters. These results suggest that what matters is the quality and not the quantity of father-child interactions.
International learning experiences are invaluable for students. Those who undertake education outside their country of residence develop leadership, self-reliance, language skills, intercultural understanding, sensitivity to local and global issues, and specialist skills when they participate in work placements and field schools. Employers also say that international experience gained through education makes a positive contribution to the workplace.1
Both students and educators have long recognized the value of learning abroad. Despite this, and the fact that almost all Canadian colleges and universities offer education-abroad opportunities (including semester exchanges, short-term study abroad, field school, and service learning), relatively few post-secondary students actually participate. Only 3.1 per cent of full-time university students2 and 1.1 per cent of full-time college students3in Canadian have gone abroad for part of their studies. Compared to some OECD countries, these figures are slim. In Germany, for example, fully 25 per cent of students in bachelors and masters programs have participated in a study abroad experience, and the country hopes to raise this number to 50 per cent by 2020.4
Budget 2016 Consultations
Submission to the House of Commons Standing
Committee on Finance
August 2015
Ideas can... build Canada
The challenges facing publics, governments, and businesses in the 21st century – from managing technological change and driving job creation, to the search for low‐carbon economic strategies, and building social inclusion – require innovative, people‐centered, evidence‐based solutions. The Federation for the Humanities and Social Sciences welcomes the opportunity to provide the following recommendations to the House of Commons Standing Committee on Finance for Budget 2016:
The boundaries between vocational and academic post compulsory education have been blurred by students combining vocational and academic studies and by students transferring increasingly between the two types of education. Institutions are also blurring the boundaries between the sectors by increasingly offering programs from two and sometimes three sectors. In contrast, teachers seem more entrenched than ever in their own sector. This article reports a project on the preparation of Australian teachers of vocational education. It examines the prospect of integrating the preparation of teachers in post compulsory education to teach in schools, vocational education institutions and higher education institutions. It argues that greater differentiation between different types of vocational teachers and vocational teacher preparation can support the development of a continuum along which it would be possible to establish points of commonality with the preparation of school and higher education teachers.