“905” Residents are most likely to identify jobs/unemployment” as the most important issue currently facing the Ontario government.
The Ontario Colleges of Applied Arts and Technology (CAATs) were founded in 1965 as a vehicle to increase access to post-secondary education, to address the needs of learners not served by the university system, and to meet local economic and community development needs. The CAATs have been highly successful at fulfilling their mandate, with 24 institutions currently serving 220,000 fulltime and 300,000 part-time students. This level of enrolment represents a 100% increase over the past 28 years.
This report examines community colleges from the perspective of the faculty who deliver their public service – high quality post-secondary education and job training. The report is based on conversations with over 600 faculty at all 24 CAATs, along with historical research and present-day inquiry into the sector’s financing, management, and operations. The report is focused primarily on perceptions by college faculty that there is a crisis of quality within the college system today.
Ensuring a good match between skills acquired in education and on the job and those required in the labour market is essential to make the most of investments in human capital and promote strong and inclusive growth. Unfortunately, in the OECD on average, about one in four workers are over-qualified –i.e. they possess higher qualifications than those required by their job – and just over one in five are under- qualified – i.e. they possess lower qualifications than those required by their job. In addition, some socio- demographic groups are more likely than others to be over-qualified – notably, immigrants and new labour market entrants who take some time to sort themselves into appropriate jobs – or under-qualified – notably, experienced workers lacking a formal qualification for the skills acquired on the labour market.
We in higher education now serve more students with more stress than ever before, yet we have done little to learn about the strategies to help them better manage it, argues Karen Costa.
If you are leading a class and imagine that students seem more distracted than ever by their digital devices, it's not your imagination. And they aren't just checking their e-mail a single time.
A new study has found that more than 90 percent of students admit to using their devices for non-class activities during class times. Less than 8 percent said that they never do so.
Whether Mr. John S. Montalbano, Chair of the Board of Governors, and/or individuals in the School of Business identified by the Faculty Association, conducted themselves in the events following Professor Jennifer Berdahl’s publication of her blog on August 8, 2015 in a manner that violated any provision of the Collective Agreement, the UBC Statement on Respectful Environment, or any applicable University policies including whether her academic freedom is or was interfered with in any way.
“Are you keeping us for the whole time today? Because I need to leave in 20 minutes,” asked a student with a baffled expression on his face. As I looked at him, I wanted so badly to explain: Of all the ways you could have chosen to introduce yourself on the first day of class, that was not the optimal one.
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.
This paper introduces two new concepts to the debate on job quality: the low-wage gap and low-wage intensity. These two measures provide information on the depth and severity of low wages. Using Labour Force Survey microdata, we discuss trends in these two measures, along with trends in the incidence of low wages over the 1997-2014 period. For example, in 2014, 27.6 per cent of all employees aged 20 to 64 years earned less than two-thirds of median hourly wages for full-time workers aged 20 to 64 years (or $16.01 per hour), our low-wage cutoff. In this same year, the low-wage gap was 21.0 per cent, which means that the average low-wage employee earned approximately 79.0 per cent of the low-wage cutoff (or $12.66 per hour). Consequently, low-wage intensity, defined as the product of the incidence and the gap (scaled by 100) was 5.8. This is down from an intensity of 6.3 in 1997, which was the result of a slightly higher incidence (27.9 per cent) and a higher gap (22.7 per cent). This paper also provides these results by gender, age, educational attainment, industry, occupation, employment status and province. These detailed results help identify which groups face the highest rates, greatest depths, and largest intensities of low-wage employment in Canada. Furthermore, this paper explores the implications of a $15 minimum wage on the low-wage gap in 2014. Finally, to provide a brief sensitivity analysis, we discuss (1) the results for low-wage employment in Canada using a different cutoff (two-thirds mean hourly wages for full-time employees aged 25 to 54 years) and (2) comparisons of our results to those of CIBC’s Employment Quality Index and the OECD’s low-pay data.
In this study, the authors examined the findings and implications of the research on trust in leadership that has been conducted during the past 4 decades. First, the study provides estimates of the primary relationships between trust in leadership and key outcomes, antecedents, and correlates (k 106). Second, the study explores how specifying the construct with alternative leadership referents (direct leaders vs. organizational leadership) and definitions (types of trust) results in systematically different relationships between trust in leadership and outcomes and antecedents. Direct leaders (e.g., supervisors) appear to be a particularly important referent of trust. Last, a theoretical framework is offered to provide parsimony to the expansive literature and to clarify the different perspectives on the construct of trust in leadership and its operation.
This exploratory comparative study examines the meaning-making experiences of six sexual minority males attending college or university in Canada or the United States. All of the participants identified as sexual minority males who were cisgender, out to family and/or friends, and between 20 and 24 years of age. In particular, the participants spoke about the intersections
between their race, gender, and sexual orientation as salient aspects of their multiple identities. Using a blend of qualitative methods, including case study, phenomenology, and grounded theory, I identified four themes that emerged from the data: (1) engagement in a social justice curriculum; (2) involvement in LGBT student organizations or resource centres; (3) experiences
of discrimination and dissonance; and (4) engagement in reflective dialogue. I discuss the implications of these themes for professional practice and future research.
La présente étude comparative exploratoire examine les expériences de recherche de signification de six hommes de minorité sexuelle fréquentant des collèges ou des universités au Canada et aux États-Unis. Tous les participants se sont définis comme des hommes cisgenres âgés entre 20 et 24 ans et ayant dévoilé leur homosexualité soit aux membres de leurs familles respectives, soit à des amis. Les participants ont entre autres identifié le recoupement de race, de genre et d’orientation sexuelle comme étant les principaux aspects de leurs multiples identités. À l’aide d’une variété de méthodes qualitatives
dont la phénoménologie, la théorie ancrée et des études de cas, j’ai relevé quatre thèmes récurrents parmi les données recueillies : (1) la participation à des programmes d’études en justice sociale; (2) l’implication dans des organisations estudiantines ou des centres de ressources pour LGBT; (3) l’expérience de discrimination et de dissonance; et (4) l’engagement
dans un dialogue réfléchi. Je discute des conséquences de ces thèmes en milieu professionnel et en prévision de futurs projets de recherche.
This article was written in response to concerns that have been expressed about the possible consequences of an increasing number of countries overtaking the United States in educational attainment. International statis-tics on educational attainment were analyzed, questions about comparabil-ity of data were discussed, and the impact of different approaches to the organization of higher education on attainment rates was examined. The author concluded that comparing the rate of attainment of subbaccalaure-ate credentials between the United States and other countries is proble-matic both because of definitional issues, and as a consequence of the major transfer function of American community colleges. The article explains how colleges that previously offered short term vocational training in many European countries have evolved into vocationally-oriented bacca-laureate granting institutions that have enabled their nations to achieve rapidly rising levels of baccalaureate degree attainment. It suggests that the experience of these countries may provide useful lessons—and cautions—for policy makers and educational leaders with respect to expanding the role of community colleges in awarding baccalaureate degrees.
Educators want nothing more than for our students to feel successful and excited to learn, and to understand the importance of their education. We want our students' attention and respect to match our own. I believe that most if not all of our students desire the same, but walking through our classroom doors are beautifully complex youth who are neurobiologically wired to feel before thinking.
The federal program that helps First Nations and Inuit people attend college or university has registered an 18.3 per cent decline in the number of students it funds since 1997, according to documents obtained by the NDP through Access to Information and shared with CBC News.
The slump is striking given the population growth in those communities over the same time period. (The First Nations population alone has grown 29 per cent since 1997.)
Jobs paranoia is widespread in Canada. Elementary pupils are coming home after receiving the “job talk” from their teachers, typically emphasizing the importance of getting good grades so they can get into a high-quality university – rarely a college, a polytechnic institute or an apprenticeship program. Parents worry about enrolling their children in the “right” schools and academic programs. There is growing concern about the transition from school to work. News media, television programs and movies offer tales of underemployed university and college graduates, intense competition for decent jobs and chronic youth unemployment.
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.
With tuition prices continuing to climb and middle-class America’s earnings stagnant for more than a decade, colleges and universities continue to face pressure from government, governing boards, students and their families to provide proof of the value of a bachelor’s degree. Students historically have had little more to go on than anecdotal information when it came to the jobs and earnings they could expect upon graduation from a specific college or university.
Ontario has already cultivated an impressive university sector. Each of the province’s universities delivers, high quality teaching and learning. Our institutions have also adapted to accommodate a growing number of students from increasingly diverse backgrounds, contributing to Ontario’s world-leading postsecondary education attainment rates. In 2009, 28 per cent of Ontarians had a university credential, higher than both the Canadian and Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) averages.
It is heartening to see an increase in the amount of research in pursuit of understanding how best to foster
young children's social, emotional and cognitive development through play-based learning. That said, the field
is replete with varying definitions or purposes regarding play-based learning as there is with the myriad of
differing notions of other related and touted benefits of "early learning". Moving coherently, reliably and validly
from evidence to improving pedagogy, early learning environmental design and policy remains difficult because
of the lack of evidentiary consensus.
Raise your hand if your salary increased by more than 50 per cent in the past five years. Nope? Didn’t think so.
But it could go up that much by September if you’re the president of a college in Ontario. Or maybe it will rise by a mere 39 per cent.
Whichever, you get the picture. As the end of a five-year wage freeze on non-unionized public sector workers approaches, the province’s 24 colleges are setting the stage for massive pay increases for their presidents.
Deb Matthews, the minister responsible for post-secondary education, needs to rein them in. Not only to stop a salary race at the college level, but to manage pay expectations for other public sector workers, including those at universities, hospitals, school boards and government agencies.
The extent of the college presidents’ pay ambitions are made clear in documents released by the Ontario Public Service Employees Union, which opposes the proposed new salary levels.