No one has ever criticised a hammer for being a hammer; it is an invaluable tool when that is what you need. But it is useless or destructive if used for the wrong purpose, and university rankings can be the same.
There are three main problems that make international rankings a poor mechanism for assessing, improving or differentiating any but the top few dozen universities in the world.
Executive Summary
The upcoming (Fall 2014) undergraduate student referendum on the desirability of a Fall Break and recent adoption of a Fall Break on a three-year trial period by Wilfrid Laurier University have independently re-ignited the discussion at the University of Waterloo. Fourteen Ontario universities currently have a Fall Break, varying from 2-5 days in length. UW is among a small
number of institutions within Ontario who do not currently have one.
The primary challenge to arranging a Fall Break is finding sufficient space to schedule: 60 teaching days, a minimum of 2 pre-exam study days, and a minimum of 12 exam days while finishing by December 22. This challenge seems relatively easy to accomplish most years but is complicated by the occasional late Labour Day holiday.
I have written this Guidebook to assist users interested in creating a campus that will be more global in its mission, programs, and people. My approach is to focus on the views and contributions of the people who are engaged in higher education. Thus it has a “person” emphasis rather than a structural or policy point of view. I do this since I think that the goals, aspirations, and achievements of those working and studying on campus is the critical factor in creating a campus with a global perspective. (Campus is to be broadly defined to include both “in-place” multiple sites and virtual.)
Education Pays 2013: The Benefits of Higher Education for Individuals and Society documents differences in the earnings and employment patterns of U.S. adults with different levels of education. It also compares health-related behaviors, reliance on
public assistance programs, civic participation, and indicators of the well-being of the next generation. Financial benefits are easier to document than nonpecuniary benefits, but the latter may be as important to students themselves, as well as to the society in which they participate. Our goal is to call attention to ways in which both individuals and society as a whole benefit
from increased levels of education.
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.
We are often warned against being judgemental. “Judge not, lest ye be judged”, for example, reminds us how vulnerable we are to others’ estimations of us, and how likely those estimations are to be biased.
Nevertheless, we continue to make judgements, both positive and negative, because we have evolved to do so. Human brains have been “domesticated” by our need to live in groups to survive. We assess others carefully, and monitor their views of us; if those views are negative, we may be cast out of the group.
We often hear that peer review is an excellent opportunity for reciprocal student learning. In theory, this makes sense. Since an instructor can only dedicate a certain amount of attention to each student, peer review allows students to receive more feedback and engage more frequently in the content they are learning. Research shows this benefits both the students who receive and provide feedback.
With all of the recent writing on globalization, it is a welcome addition to find a book that deals comprehensively with the relationship between globalization and education at all levels and comparatively in different countries, both developed and developing. This book is a collection of articles that arose from presentations at the 1997 western regional conference of the Comparative and International Education Society and were later augmented. Given that history, it is unusual for such a book to be a cohesive whole, and yet it manages to be that. The quality of the various contributions is quite consistent and authors
acknowledge different contributions and perspectives that appear in other sections of the book.
Sometimes I watch my students in the hallways before class starts and marvel at the computing power (they call them 'smartphones') they hold in their hands. They use this power to text and share pictures and thoughts on social media. Then they stuff all that power in their pockets. In my small, private school, we have an "off and away" policy for cellphones in the classroom, which is supposed to eliminate the distractions. But it is not a perfect system, and students are still tempted to use their phones.
Perhaps you've had thoughts like mine: How can I get those supercomputers to work for their learning instead of being a nuisance? Why should I make them hide their mobile devices or fear they will get in trouble for using them? I'm just not satisfied with "off and away"! These questions have grown into a desire to find new ways to leverage my students’ mobile devices into learning tools.
University campuses across Canada are struggling with a mental health tsunami that is reordering priorities in every
community and educational institution. Dealing with crises and the potential for suicide has altered the lives and agendas of people working in schools, hospitals, municipalities and service agencies, as well as parents and students. If mental health is the problem, suicide and suicide attempts are the outcome that tells us that we have to do better.
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.
The letter is typical of those liberal arts colleges send to high school students who have done well on the PSAT.
"Which of the following would you expect to find at one of the best liberal colleges?" asks the letter, from Macalester College. It goes on to list qualities of which the college can boast: "academic challenge," "a global perspective," "1,257 miles of hiking trails," "active, politically aware students," "small classes and 10:1 student-faculty ratio." Mixed into the list are some qualities at Macalester than you won't find everywhere else. For example, bagpipes makes the
list, as the college's Scottish heritage is evident in the tradition of using the instrument to announce that a professor has earned tenure.
The practice of shared governance is contested terrain in American higher education. Despite consensus that shared governance is a collaborative approach to decision-making characterized by the distribution of authority across various institutional actors (e.g., faculty, senior administrators, trustees), models and norms of effective shared governance remain elusive. Indeed higher education critics within and beyond the academy often identify the practice of shared decision-making as a major barrier to innovation and fiscal efficiency, two organizational qualities deemed essential for survival in today’s rapidly changing global knowledge economy.
In this ongoing series focused on flipped and active-learning classrooms, we’re taking a deeper look into how to create successful learning experiences for students. We’ve examined how to encourage students to complete preclass work, how to hold students accountable for pre-class work, and how to connect pre-class work to in-class activities. Now let’s focus on the challenge of managing the in-person learning environment
Abstract
Various studies acknowledge the uncertainty many doctoral graduates face when beginning their search for full-time employment within the academic sector. Recent graduates face a job market where the likelihood of obtaining full-time permanent positions in academia is perceived to be declining, and the mobility of graduates within the sector is unclear. Drawing on Statistics Canada’s 2013 National Graduates Survey, this paper assesses whether graduates who pursued a doctoral degree to become a full-time professor achieved their goal within three years of graduation. The results suggest that although a large portion of doctoral graduates pursued their degrees to become full-time professors, relatively few reported obtaining such positions within three years of graduation, regardless of field of study.
Résumé
Plusieurs études attestent de l’incertitude que doivent affronter les titulaires d’un doctorat quand ils entament leurs recherches pour un poste à temps plein dans le secteur universitaire. En effet, les récents diplômés font face à un marché de l’emploi où on plein dans le secteur académique s’amenuisent, et où la mobilité professionnelle des titulaires d’un doctorat de ce secteur demeure floue. À partir des données de l’Enquête nationale auprès des diplômés 2013 de Statistique Canada, cet article examine la propension des titulaires d’un doctorat souhaitant devenir professeurs à temps plein à réaliser leur objectif sur une période de trois ans après leur collation des grades. Indépendamment du domaine d’étude, les résultats démontrent que, bien qu’une grande proportion de titulaires d’un doctorat aspire à devenir professeurs à temps plein, peu d’entre eux rapportent avoir obtenu de tels postes trois ans après leur remise de diplôme. perçoit que les chances d’obtenir un poste permanent à temps
Applicants from institutions with grade inflation are favored over those who had more rigorous instructors, study finds.
When colleges crack down on grade inflation, students invariably complain that they will be at a disadvantage when they apply to graduate school without as many A grades as might otherwise be the case.
The students may be correct.
Despite the cash injection, campus services will not be able to meet everyone's mental health needs, Minister of
Advanced Education and Skills Development Deb Matthews said in a statement to the Toronto Star.
"Mental illness is a spectrum," Matthews said. "For some students, on-campus resources such as counselling
and/or peer support may be the best and most helpful provision of care. For students with more complex mental
health needs, the institution can serve as a point of referral or information in helping that student access the
appropriate community supports and get the help that they need."
Higher ed is an industry built on relationships. This is no more so than on a traditional residential campus.
Much of the work of moving projects and initiatives forward happens in conversation. There is a reason that a shared joke across higher ed is that nobody can get any work done during the day - as everybody is too busy in meetings.
On most campuses, these conversations are face-to-face. They involve going to each other’s offices, finding a meeting room, and sometimes grabbing a coffee. (My preferred one-on-one meeting venue is a walking meeting).
A face-to-face meeting culture accomplishes many important goals. There is a ritual to the face-to-face discussion, one that involves norms of social connections. Meetings are places to do work - but they are also places to learn about and make connections with our colleagues.
Active learning is "anything that involves students in doing things and thinking about the things
they are doing" (Bonwell & Eison, 1991, p. 2).
Felder & Brent (2009) define active learning as "anything course-related that all students in a
class session are called upon to do other than simply watching, listening and taking notes" (p.
2).
Active learning strategies can be as short as a few minutes long.
Active learning techniques can be integrated into a lecture or any other classroom setting
relatively easily. Even large classrooms can involve learning activities beyond the traditional
lecture format.
More of this year’s freshman class expects to participate in at least one protest while they’re in college than at any other time in the last 50 years. The portion of all students who claim to be these prospective protesters? 10%. Among black students, the proportion rises to 16%.