Universities have not always been the best of neighbours. Community members squabble with the schools over irritants like development plans, rowdy student parties and self-centred research practices.
That’s beginning to change as universities increasingly turn to local residents and non-profit organizations as allies, not adversaries. “There is a fundamental shift in universities across North America from the ivory tower to the public square,” says Diane Kenyon, vice-president of university relations for the University of Calgary, which added community engagement to its strategic plan in 2011. “There are no walls and no barriers between the university and its community.”
What’s driving the change? More importantly, is it for real? A $2.5-million, seven-year national study on universitycommunity
engagement, funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC), is investigating a proliferation of partnerships across the country for answers.
When Michael Maccoby wrote this article, which was first published in early 2000, the business world was still under the spell of the Internet and its revolutionary promise. It was a time, Maccoby wrote, that called for larger-than-life leaders who could see the big picture and paint a compelling portrait of a dramatically different future. And that, he argued, was one reason we saw the emergence of the superstar CEOs—the grandiose, actively self-promoting, and genuinely narcissistic leaders who dominated the covers of business magazines at that time. Skilled orators and creative strategists, narcissists have vision and a great ability to attract and inspire followers.
The times have changed, and we’ve learned a lot about the dangers of overreliance on big personalities, but that doesn’t mean narcissism can’t be a useful leadership trait. There’s certainly a dark side to narcissism—narcissists, Freud told us, are
emotionally isolated and highly distrustful. They’re usually poor listeners and lack empathy. Perceived threats can trigger rage. The challenge today—as Maccoby understood it to be four years ago—is to take advantage of their strengths while
tempering their weaknesses.
This week, Beckie considers professors’ efforts to inspire contemplation among digitally-distracted students and flags a
new initiative to encourage science professors to embrace active learning. You’ll also find suggested reading material
and a tip from a reader.
This paper seeks to address the systemic barriers that impact the ability of Aboriginal peoples to access, persist and succeed in post-secondary education. Given histories of discrimination and chronic underfunding of Aboriginal education at both the K-12 and post-secondary level, OUSA believes that action must be taken by all levels of government and institutions. This
is particularly pressing as recent figures have shown that the attainment gap for Aboriginal peoples1 may in fact be widening. OUSA affirms the importance of self-determination for Aboriginal peoples, and stresses that any policy intervention must be undertaken in direct partnership and consultation with Aboriginal communities.
This story begins late last school year, when I was standing in front of my Introduction to Film class, getting set up for the day’s session. The technology in the classroom was often glitchy, so I’d given myself plenty of time. I chatted with my teaching assistant about the new Twin Peaks while logging in to my email to retrieve the PowerPoint I’d sent myself.
That’s when I saw the message from my department with the subject header “2017-2018 Budget Cuts.” “Well, that can’t be good,” I thought and clicked to open it. It began, “Dear Sara, As you might know, the university is in the midst of a significant budget cut across all units for Financial Year 2018, which starts July 1.” And it ended, “Within this context, we unfortunately will not be able to offer the courses that we projected for you in 2017-2018. I am sorry to let you know about this development …”
During the 2014-15 academic year, 9.4 percent of all students attended more than one institution, a figure that has remained constant for the last three years. In each year shown, the mobility rate was highest for students who began the academic year at a two-year public institution. The postsecondary student one-year mobility rate is the percentage of students, across all levels of study, who enrolled in more than one institution within a single academic year (including summer and concurrent enrollments). It
provides a current indicator of the likely double-counting of institution-based annual enrollment reporting.
The increasing scarcity of women within higher academic ranks is troublesome, especially as associate and full-professors with tenure are generally those tapped for leadership positions. This study surveyed female administrators in distance education in an effort to thematically analyze their perceptions of distance learning in higher education. Themes that garnered more input from the women included the following: assumptions of gender disparity, the optimistic viewpoint that in the future more women will succeed as administrators in distance education, and the belief that the role of administrators was to provide value and goals in distance education but that change in this arena was too slow and obstructions to the quality of distance learning needed to be eliminated. In addition, it appears that Caucasian (non - Hispanic) women are more prone to suggest that gender disparity is a problem and women who hold a higher level of administration spoke less often about problems with gender disparity and appeared to have a more positive attitude.
An independent arbitrator will soon hear a case at Queen’s University that raises serious questions about protection of faculty who allege colleagues’ academic misconduct.
The university’s office of the provost has found Professor Morteza Shirkhanzadeh guilty of workplace harassment in a dispute that dates back a decade. As a result, he is banned from entering three university buildings and communicating with certain administrators, professors and the board of trustees.
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
The purpose of the study was primarily concerned with exploring the major issues that are confronting presidents of higher education and determining if transformational or transactional leadership practices and concepts are warranted in addressing their issues. The study attempted to determine if presidents or institutions of higher education are taking the path to success and if they take charge with a transformational or transactional leadership style.
Post secondary education continues to face major challenges in Ontario. Despite an injection of much needed funding in 2005, Ontario universities remain chronically under funded. Inadequate support threatens the global competitiveness of Ontario
universities and the provincial economy.
Georgia State University (GSU), a public university in Atlanta with nearly 33,000 undergraduates, has dramatically improved its rates of student success over the past decade. GSU’s six-year graduation rate has increased from 32 percent in 2003 to 54 percent in 2014.1 During the same period, GSU has made a concerted effort to increase enrollment for traditionally underserved students. Remarkably, the share of its students who are Pell eligible nearly doubled, from 31 percent in 2003 to 58 percent in 2013.
GSU’s success with traditionally underserved students has received broad recognition. National media outlets have touted the innovative programs undertaken at GSU,2 and President Obama praised GSU during the 2014 White House College Opportunity Summit.3 GSU is a core member of the University Innovation Alliance, and now hosts approximately 80 visits each year from representatives of other colleges and universities seeking to understand how GSU has achieved its success.4 To research this case study, we visited GSU’s downtown Atlanta campus in March 2015, spending two days meeting with 17 administrators and staff members.5
Colleges and Institutes Canada (CICan) welcomes the opportunity to provide the Standing Committee on Finance with its recommendations for Budget 2018. This budget is an important opportunity to build on Budget 2017’s measures aimed at increasing access to skills upgrading and post-secondary education and strengthening innovation in Canada.
Canada’s colleges, institutes, cégeps and polytechnics stimulate innovation, drive productivity, and strengthen the middle class. They offer a vast array of post-secondary programs designed to meet the needs of the labour market, equip graduates with skills that make them resilient in periods of economic uncertainty and disruption, and provide retraining for adults facing job dislocation and unemployment. As the main providers of post-secondary education and skills development for Indigenous peoples, colleges and institutes also play an important role in fostering reconciliation.
The line between collaboration and cheating is fuzzy. It’s still clear at the edges, but messy in the middle. When students are working in groups, searching for a solution to a problem, looking through possible answers for the best one, or sorting out material to include in a presentation, that’s collaboration. When one student in the group solves the problem and everyone else copies the answer, that’s cheating. When one student fails to deliver material she or he’s been assigned and the rest of the group covers, that’s cheating.
Critical thinking is no longer a strange concept in this world. It is being talked about all over, from university to the
workplace, from developed countries to poor ones. The importance of thinking critically has never really been
considered properly until recently. In fact, critical thinking is believed to be the new intellect of the modern era that
reflects a person’s ability to analyze daily problems and make the right decision.
As it’s not a specific talent that people are born with, critical thinking requires practice and effort. Ironically, while
critical thinking has become popular all over the world, not many people know how to develop their critical thinking
skills effectively. Therefore, we are about to show you how you can effectively develop these skills.
As I've mentioned before, my 7-year-old daughter takes piano lessons. One of the biggest challenges has been getting her to play for herself, not for her parents. Often I'll ask her how she thought she played a song and I'll get a shrug in return. She plays, but she doesn't listen to herself play. That lack of listening, I fear, is a sign that she's just playing because we're making her.
Many of the teaching tips I've suggested in this column have been meant to encourage your students to take responsibility for their learning. For active-learning strategies to really work, I've argued, we need students to buy in completely to our courses. They need to want to learn for themselves — not for us or a grade. To accomplish that, we can invite students to take some control over the syllabus. We can turn course policies into collaborative projects, in which students have an equal say in determining important aspects of the course. We can encourage students to articulate their goals for the course, rather than just expect them to meet ours. And we can design our courses to make sure we haven't foreclosed any of those possibilities.
Now here’s an argument I haven’t heard before: Improving your instruction makes it easier for students to learn. If it’s easier for them to learn, they won’t work as hard in the course, and that means they could learn less. It’s called offsetting behavior and we can’t ask students about it directly because it would be disingenuous for them to admit to studying less when learning becomes easier.
Cite this publication in the following format:
KPMG LLP (2015). Measuring the Economic Impact of Postsecondary Institutions – Appendix Toronto: Higher Education Quality Council of Ontario.
This report is part of a wider three-year program of research, ‘Vocations: the link between post-compulsory education and the labour market’, which is investigating the educational and occupational paths that people take and how their study relates to their work. It is specifically interested in exploring the transitions that students make in undertaking a second qualification (that is, whether they change field of education and/or move between the VET and higher education sectors). It also looks at the reasons why they decide to undertake another qualification.
The authors use a combination of data from the 2009 Australian Bureau of Statistics Survey of Education and Training and interviews with students and graduates, as well as managers, careers advisors, learning advisors, teachers and academics, to examine these transitions. The finance, primary, health and electrical trades/engineering industries are used as case studies.
There are about 420 registered private career colleges (PCCs) in Ontario – the number is in constant flux. 60% of schools are ten years of age or younger. They serve 53,000 full time equivalent (FTE) students, or about 1 in 15 Ontario postsecondary students. Their overall vocational revenues are in the order of $360M annually. They are mostly small; 70% have total revenues under $1M and average enrolment is under 200.
Though they are private businesses operating in a competitive market, they intersect with public interests on several fronts. They must register with government and are subject to consumer protection requirements (including student contracts, tuition refund policies, contribution to a train-out fund that takes care of students in the event of a sudden closure). Their programs of study must be government-approved following an external, third-party quality review. They are subject to sanction (financial penalties, even closure) if they fail to meet these requirements.