A commitment by three Ontario colleges, including Fanshawe, to invest millions of dollars in a college in Medina, Saudi Arabia, is being questioned by OPSEU.
According to a report, Fanshawe College, Mohawk College and Seneca College are planning an investment of $2.5 million each in a five-year deal.
Fanshawe’s Board of Governors apparently approved the venture in April and the goal is set to open the
school in September 2015.
A message in bold and italics emblazons the home page of the Lakehead University Student Union food bank’s
website. “We are in desperate need of food!!!” it reads. “Any amount that you can give would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks to everyone who helps out!!!” The page urges students at the Thunder Bay, Ont., school to get in touch if they
have “an emergency need for food.” The urgency of the post reflects a troubling new trend on university campuses. As
post-secondary education costs continue to rise, students are finding it increasingly difficult to afford food. Across the
country, food-bank visits are up, and a new study shows almost half of 450 students surveyed at Lakehead lack food
security.
Ontario is taking a historic step in recognizing the unique role Indigenous Institutes have in the province's postsecondary education system with the introduction of new legislation that, if passed, would transfer key functions and oversight to Indigenous people.
Deb Matthews, Minister of Advanced Education and Skills Development, and David Zimmer, Minister of Indigenous Relations and Reconciliation, were joined by the Aboriginal Institutes Consortium, chiefs, leaders of Indigenous Institutes and students from across the province in Toronto today to mark this important step on the path to reconciliation with Indigenous peoples.
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.
The retirement patterns of senior faculty are an issue of ongoing interest in higher education, particularly since the
2008-09 recession. If a significant share of tenured faculty works past “normal” retirement age, challenges can arise for institutional leadership focused on keeping the faculty workforce dynamic for purposes of teaching, research and service. Buyout packages and phased retirement programs have been common responses to encourage faculty retirement, but colleges and universities are increasingly interested in alternative and complementary strategies to manage faculty retirement patterns.
It may seem natural for a president to try to appease a board, but establishing clear roles and boundaries is vitally important, write Barbara McFadden Allen, Ruth Watkins and Robin Kaler.
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.
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.
The longer I teach (I’m now in my 32nd year) the more I’m convinced that the best thing we can do for our students is help them learn to think for themselves.
That involves explaining what critical thinking actually means — a step I fear we often skip — as well as equipping them with the requisite skills. That’s why I recommend talking to students on the first day of class about critical thinking. What is it? Why is it important? How can they learn to do it?
What follows is an example of my opening-day remarks. For graduate students and Ph.D.s new to teaching, if this talk resonates with you, feel free to adapt it for your own classrooms.
One of my doctoral students just got a tenure-track assistant professorship. That’s excellent for her, but a decade ago, it wouldn’t have rated mention in a newspaper column. Of course, that was before the amount of tenure-track openings dropped like a barometer during hurricane season. Today, getting a tenure-track position feels more like a "Man Bites Dog" event.
During that same period, undergraduate enrollment at American colleges and universities continued to rise — as it has for decades. Clearly more and more students need to be taught, so where have all the teaching jobs gone?They’ve gone to the same people who have been doing a lot of our undergraduate teaching all along: contingent faculty members, meaning graduate students and adjuncts. That’s not exactly news to anyone who has been watching the faculty labor market — or to the graduate students doing so much of the work. In the humanities, we’ve seen nontenure-track jobs (NTTs) multiply year after year. As David Laurence of the Modern Language Association has shown in PowerPoint talks he’s given on the subject, the proportion of faculty jobs that are tenured and tenure-track has been dropping steadily over the past two generations.
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.
This purpose of this article is to introduce others to a successful, innovative, self-funding model of entrepreneurship education through a collaborative effort among seven universities and colleges in Northeast Ohio. Ashland University, Baldwin-Wallace College, Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland State University, John Carroll University, Kent State University, and The University of Akron created a new 501(c) (3) non-profit corporation called the Entrepreneurship Education Consortium (EEC) http://www.eecneohio.com/acorn.php?page=home to stimulate
entrepreneurial activity within the region.
A DISCUSSION of educational leadership in these troublous times might concern itself with an attempt to review our social and economic ills, to show their relationship to education, and to propose the way out by means of economic and social reconstruction. I shall assume that all of you are familiar with current discussion concerning the maladjustments in our society. I shall take it
for granted, as well, that you are conversant with the opposed points of view of those who see the
need for complete reorganization of our economic life, our government, and indeed the whole social
order, and those who believe that progress lies in the more gradual evolution of our society. I
feel sure that you will agree with me that leaders in education and in all other walks of
life will need to cooperate in finding and putting into effect those changes which will contribute to the common good. I take it, as well, that you would agree that those of us who work in the field of education must depend for guidance on experts in economics, in government, in psychology, in sociology, and in anthropology if we are to have a sound basis in fact for our thinking with respect to social change.
Jenny: For much of the history of the Career Talk column, we’ve focused on faculty careers. But in the coming months, we are going to turn to a different topic, and explore the career paths and concerns of M.A.s, A.B.D.s, and Ph.D.s who opt for careers in campus administration.
Julie: Let’s start with the hiring process. How does it work? What application materials will you need? How is it different from a faculty search?
First, it’s important to understand that, while all colleges and universities have similar missions, they operate in very different ways. Administrative offices may have come into being organically or strategically. The same office — say, international programs — may report to university life at one institution but to the provost at another. When you start applying for a particular administrative position, it’s wise to figure out the office’s place within the institution because that will affect the way you write your letter and contextualize the job.
This qualitative case study investigated how adult graduates of online Bachelor's degree programs describe the online aspect of their degree. Online education is promoted as a method for adult students to access the benefits of a college degree. Therefore, it is important for prospective online students, higher education institutions and policy makers to understand how online degrees are valued in society and by online graduates.The primary method of data collection was interviews of 24 graduates. The setting of this study, a well-regarded research university primarily known for its traditional campus-based programs, helped to isolate perceptions of the online delivery modality. All participants in the study held a high opinion of their online degree and of the university. However, the participants also recognized that some people have a negative opinion of online degrees. The participants described two strategies for dealing with encounters with people with negative perceptions of online degrees. Slightly more than half of the participants were forthcoming and open about earning a degree online. However, a large minority of participants were concerned about negative perceptions of online degrees. These participants often did not volunteer information about the online aspect of their degree to other people unless specifically questioned. Additional research is recommended to further explain the extent to which perceptions of online degrees are associated with the online delivery mode rather than other factors and to investigate the effect of delivery mode and institution type on the economic impact of an earning a Bachelor's degree later in life.
I didn’t always want to be a professor, but when I learned what a professor did (or what I thought they did), I decided
it was exactly the profession from which to do the things I wanted to do. My early career dreams primarily revolved
around three things: I wanted to be an actress, an activist and a writer.
Reality got the best of me, and I decided none of those things were viable career paths. Or at least not financially
lucrative career paths, which was a necessity for someone who grew up working-class with a single mom. By the
end of college (which I attended by the grace of loans and persistence), I was enamored with the professors who
taught me theories to make sense of my positionality as a woman, a poor person, a queer femme, a white person,
etc. I also witnessed professors publishing books as well as doing activist work on their days away from the campus.
And they got to perform, in a way, in front of the students they taught. I felt like it was a legitimate dream career, and
I was nothing short of elated when I was accepted tuition-free into a master’s and then a Ph.D. program.
From pro-rape chants at St. Mary's University in Halifax to misogynistic Facebook posts by some dentistry students at Dalhousie University, sexual assault has become a contentious topic on Canadian campuses.
Over the course of six months, CBC News contacted 87 university and major colleges across Canada to request the number of sexual assaults reported on each campus to the institution between 2009 and 2013.
Here's that data, searchable by school.
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.
Many colleges and universities want to attract a more diverse work force and foster greater inclusivity in their faculty and administrative ranks, but don't know how. The Chronicle wants to help, so we've recast the weekly On Hiring newsletter and we're sharing stories, news, and data from around the web aimed at helping hiring managers and recruiters make better, more informed decisions about diversity hiring at their institutions and across higher education generally. Here are some highlights from this week's newsletter. If you'd like to receive the new and improved On Hiring and Diversity newsletter, sign up here.
Focus of Study: This study aimed at examining teacher needs specific to data-related professional learning through a lens informed by knowledgebased organizational learning. We were guided by two broad questions: (a) What knowledge and skills do teachers need in order to engage in datainformed practice? (b) How do professional learning supports address these needs?