Part-time faculty teach approximately 58% of U.S. community college classes and thus manage learning experiences for more than half (53%) of students enrolled in community colleges (JBL Associates, 2008). Often referred to as contingent faculty, their work is conditional; the college typically has no obligation to them beyond the current academic term. At many colleges, the use of contingent faculty began with hiring career professionals who brought real-world experience into the classroom. Historically, colleges also have hired contingent faculty when enrollment spiked, the college needed to acquire a particular type of expertise, or full-time faculty members were not available to teach a particular course.
Increasingly, however, contingent faculty have become a fundamental feature of the economic model that sustains community college education. Because they typically have lower pay levels than fulltime faculty and receive minimal, if any, benefits, part-time faculty are institutions’ least expensive way to deliver instruction. As public funding, as a percentage of college costs, has steadily declined—and as colleges have been forced to find ways to contain costs so they can sustain college access—the proportion of part-time faculty has grown at colleges across the country. Today part-time faculty far outnumber full-time faculty at most colleges.
Academic freedom is supposed to protect unpopular views. A case involving an Oberlin professor who claimed that
ISIS is really the CIA and Mossad asks whether that freedom extends to falsehoods.
There has been much hype of late about building 'global citizens' out of our internationally mobilehigher education students and academics.
Doctoral supervisors are often said to “go the extra mile” for their students, but few academics will do this literally.
Sarahjane Jones, research fellow at Birmingham City University’s Centre for Health and Social Care Research, is, however, one academic who can actually make that claim.
While most scholars confine one-on-one tutorials to their office, Jones prefers to take her PhD charges on a walk along Birmingham’s canal towpaths to discuss their research, covering three to four miles in a typical “walking supervision”.
Higher education is increasingly looking to technology as a means of tackling persistent equity challenges and improving student outcomes. Yet technology in and of itself is not a solution -- unless people use technology to create new systems, behaviors and student experiences.
The good news is that Canada is home to so many great universities that it’s difficult to make a poor decision. That’s why choosing the school that best suits you requires going beyond rankings and reputation, and considering the unique culture and educational environment of your potential alma mater.
So what do you really want to get from your university experience? According to multiple surveys, the majority of young people today seek more than just a paycheque from their career. A recent Millennial Branding report found that 72 per cent of this demographic seek work with greater meaning. “Having a job where I can have an impact” ranked higher than wealth or prestige in a 2012 workforce survey conducted by Net Impact.
That’s why, in this year’s Canadian University Report, we looked at how universities are helping undergraduate students make an impact on their careers and in their communities. We spoke to students, faculty and university officials about opportunities to develop the skills needed for a meaningful career and life after graduation (from co-op programs to social entrepreneurship curriculums, from volunteering to purpose-driven business incubators). What we heard was that students aren’t waiting to don their cap and gown before they get started; they are already working with organizations in their communities and beyond, and launching their own businesses and non-profits to tackle our most-challenging social and environmental issues.
When Bernie trailed Behind me to my office after class looking crestfallen and slumped into the chair to study with some intensity the laces on his sneakers, i realized that a battle of epic proportion was being waged. after some moments of silence, he blurted out that he was dropping out of school, that he just didn’t feel connected to the students in my class or to students in any other of his classes for that matter. he felt much more comfort- able with the construction crew he worked with every summer. maybe, after all, this was his true calling—being in the open air with scuffed work boots and dirt under his fingernails. maybe this was where he really should be. maybe college just wasn’t for him.
When considering LGBT rights and equality, many people nowadays think they’re the just thing to do. What’s often
overlooked is how such social changes actually benefit straight people as well.
What will the scale-up of the internet of things, the rising sharing economy and a zero marginal cost society mean for civilization? Nothing short of historic.
Messy breakups between colleges and universities and their presidents made headlines again this summer. Trustees have accused presidents of poor judgment, unapproved and unauthorized spending, lack of professionalism, and inadequate goals and objectives. The separations played out in public, and many of them required a legal resolution.
But litigation costs are only a fraction of the harm done to both the college and the president in these kinds of terminations.
The reputations of both the college and the president are damaged by the controversies. Stories that portray a board as not supporting its president will probably cause future candidates for leadership positions at the college to think twice about applying. Community supporters and donors may withdraw support from the institution in response to the negative press that often accompanies the termination of employment of top leadership. For their part, presidents who are fired often have trouble overcoming the damage to their careers and successfully securing a leadership position at a different college or university.
Building on StudentsNS’ quality and accessibility values, this report discusses the systemic barriers that persons with disabilities face when pursuing post-secondary education. Providing an in-depth discussion of the supports and challenges found within the academic system, this paper begins to re-conceptualize how disability is viewed and accommodated. Nova Scotia has made great strides toward enabling persons with disabilities to access post-secondary education in the past several decades, but we still have a long way to go. Persons with disabilities remain among the most underrepresented and underemployed groups in Canada. Ensuring persons with disabilities have access to and adequate support during post-secondary education is fundamental if we want this to change. Programs aimed at increasing persons with disabilities’ participation in post-secondary education, and in the work force are often insufficient. Similarly, the supports offered by post-secondary institutions (funded through the province) could be improved to better support students with disabilities. We make suggestions for the post-secondary system to further develop present accessibility measures and improve the quality of education delivered to students with disabilities. Recognizing that providing support for students with disabilities is not purely an academic matter, this report will be complimented by future reports on campus health services, social determinants of access to post-secondary education, and discrimination and human rights.
Total student debt in Canada has risen by 6.2 per cent a year over the last 10 years to $42.9 new study by research company Strategic Insight.
A lot of that debt, the report says, can be blamed on parents who have spent so much money they don't have enough to save for their children's college or university fund.
Debt may actually be an intergenerational problem, says Strategic Insight's senior managing director, Carlos Cardone.
"There is almost like a spillover effect," said Cardone.
"Families are dealing with more debt, and as a consequence of that, they may not have the capacity to save all the money they would like to save for things like education."
However talented, no one is a natural-born teacher. Honing the craft takes significant care and effort, not just by the individual, but also by the school at large. Though experience does matter, it matters only to the extent that a teacher -- regardless of how long he or she has been in the classroom -- commits to continued professional development to refresh his or her status as a transformational teacher. Along those lines, even after a decade in the classroom, I don't claim to be beyond criticism -- not in the least. Still, I wish to offer some advice on constantly striving toward perfection, however elusive that goal will always remain.
The Ontario Ministry of Community and Social Services estimates that one in seven people in Ontario have a disability.1 A disability can affect a person's ability to achieve post-secondary education, and can also greatly influence their experience within a post-secondary institution. Due to overall rise in enrollment we believe that living with disabilities are an emerging issue in the post- secondary sector. Why is this population growing? In Ontario, 34 percent of people between the ages of 15 and 64 with
disabilities have a college or university degree.2 Past governments have reflected this concern within two ground-breaking bodies of legislation: the Ontarians with Disabilities Act (ODA; 2001), and within the Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act (AODA; 2005). Collectively, these laws mandate that persons living with disabilities in Ontario be sufficiently accommodated.
The recent decision by the University of California, Berkeley, to restrict public access to free online educational content has raised questions about whether other colleges and universities will do the same to avoid legal action.
The university this month announced it will remove audio and video lectures currently available to the public on platforms such as iTunes U and YouTube. Berkeley said it reached that decision after determining that retroactively making the content accessible to people with disabilities would be “extremely expensive.”
Berkeley has pledged to create new publicly available content that conforms to web accessibility standards, but restocking its online libraries will take a long time -- its decision to remove content encompasses tens of thousands of publications. The university’s YouTube channel, for example, includes 9,897 videos.
Based on recent polling commissioned by the Ontario Undergraduate Student Alliance, an overwhelming majority of Ontarians (69.3%) believe that the current practice of increasing postsecondary tuition fees by five percent annually is unfair. When prompted to evaluate different policy alternatives, 59.6 percent agreed that the government should freeze tuition, while 70.8 percent agreed that all future increases should be tied to inflation. OUSA believes that this data indicates that a change to Ontario’s current tuition framework to either a lower increase or a freeze would be strongly supported by the public.
Many international comparisons of education over the past 50 years have included some measure of students’ opportunity to learn (OTL) in their schooling. Results have typically confirmed the common sense notion that a student’s exposure in school to the assessed concepts, operationalized in some sort of time metric, is related to what the student has learned as measured by the assessment. What has not been demonstrated is a connection between the specifics of what students have encountered through schooling and their performance on any sort of applied knowledge assessment such as PISA. This paper explores this issue in 2012 PISA which, for the first time, included several OTL items on the student survey. OTL demonstrated a significant relationship with student performance on both the main paper-and-pencil literacy assessment as well as the optional computer-based assessment at all three levels – country, school and student. In every country at least one if not all three of the constructed OTL indices – exposure to word problems, formal mathematics topics, and applied mathematics problems – demonstrated a significant relationship to the overall PISA measure of mathematics literacy as well as the four sub areas of change and relationships, shapes and space, quantity, and uncertainty and data. Additionally, results indicated that variability in OTL was related to student performance having implications for equality of opportunity.
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.
This qualitative investigation identifies a condition of frenetic change experienced by organizational members at two university colleges in British Columbia, Canada, during the past decade. Prominent outcomes of the formal designation of five former community colleges as university colleges included curricular change and the evolution of a new institutional mission. The brief history of the university colleges of British Columbia parallels the process of economic globalization in the province of British Columbia, and the responses of managers and faculty at university colleges indicate that globalization influenced the formation
and functioning of these institutions.
Statistics Canada is moving to reinstate its Full Time-University and College Academic Staff System survey, and to include information on part-timers.
The data it will reveal is bound to shed much-needed light on a growing challenge that is already well-recognized but far too infrequently discussed in academia: the recent surge in numbers of underemployed PhD graduates at Canada’s universities.
Institutions have made their best efforts to encourage graduates to think beyond university jobs, and have directed more toward careers in government and the private sector. Yet serious challenges within the system remain — for recent PhDs themselves, for the renewal of the academy, and for Canada’s future research potential.