One of the scariest conversations to have with an adviser can be telling that person that you are not interested in an
academic career. Depending on your field, they may have high expectations that you will follow their path to a tenure-track position. But you may not even be sure whether you want to go into academe or another industry, and you’d at least like to talk about your different options. So how do you mention to your adviser that you are considering nonacademic career fields?
This article examines the share of adults aged 25 to 65 with a university degree who were in the lower range for literacy skills, numeracy skills, or both, and the factors most likely to be associated with lower levels of literacy or numeracy among university graduates. In this article, individuals in the lower range for literacy and numeracy are defined as those who scored at level 2 or below (out of 5 levels) in tests administered to survey respondents who participated in the Programme for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIAAC).
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."
A number of studies suggest that student evaluations of teaching are unreliable due to various kinds of biases against instructors. (Here’s one addressing gender.) Yet conventional wisdom remains that students learn best from highly rated instructors; tenure cases have even hinged on it.
What if the data backing up conventional wisdom were off? A new study suggests that past analyses linking student achievement to high student teaching evaluation ratings are flawed, a mere “artifact of small sample sized studies and publication bias.”
At most colleges and universities, summer offers a blessed break from the regular meetings of the academic year. It’s a relief to have a few months’ free from having to jockey for air time, listen to long-winded people opine on matters they know little about, navigate petty factional skirmishes, or shore up colleagues whose ideas are routinely shot down.
Now that it’s September, the prospect of returning to meeting-heavy days may seem enervating. But what if we made 2019-20 the year in which we change the traditional dynamics of our meetings? Could we find ways to make them more productive, less
contentious, and more open to voices that usually get muffled or silenced?
Five principles of deliberate practice can help teachers consistently improve their teaching.
What does it actually take to teach a college class nowadays in our age of distraction?
For some faculty, the answer is technology — PowerPoints, laptops, visual aids. But technology is itself a distraction. And what if you are the kind of teacher who likes chalk and blackboards, discussions around a table, and hard-copy texts and handouts. How do you get, and keep, their attention?
Entering the room to the obligatory unsettledness at the beginning of every class period, you wonder: How long would it take them to settle down if you didn't say anything?
The philosophical halls are ringing lately with an argument over the virtue of graduate-student publication. J. David Velleman, a professor of philosophy at New York University, started the clamor in July when he posted "The publication Emergency" on a philosophers’ blog, "The Daily
Nous."
Velleman makes a simple but radical two-part proposal:
First, philosophy journals "should adopt a policy of refusing to publish work by graduate students."
Second, to give teeth to the ban, Velleman suggests that philosophy departments "adopt a policy of
discounting graduate-student work in tenure-and-promotion reviews."
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.
For a guy hauling around almost $300 billion of debt, Charles Sousa was in a buoyant mood. Ontario’s finance minister had just announced that families making less than $50,000 would soon have free post-secondary education, and when we spoke, it was as if he were daring me to find fault in the idea. After all, he said, the Liberals were removing a critical barrier to higher education, the
looming threat of a massive student debt. The idea was instantly applauded by a syllabus of education groups.
I am a white tenure-track faculty member, and I consider myself a progressive. I want to be an ally to my students of color, but I’m not sure how. I don’t want to make mistakes and offend anyone. Is it better for me to say nothing, if I’m not an expert on race? I feel so helpless. Do you have any advice?
I will answer this as best I can, with the goal of opening up further dialogue. I want to be clear that I am a white person addressing this column to other white people who are teaching. I do not mean to exclude anyone, or to claim authority about the experiences or needs of people of color. It is my firm conviction that the time has come for white people to speak up about racism, and to educate one another about anti-racist activism, and not leave the burden of this work on the shoulders of people of color. I am drawing inspiration here from a group I am involved with, Showing Up for Racial Justice, a national organization dedicated to mobilizing white people in anti-racism work. You can probably find a local chapter in your town, and I urge you to do so, as SURJ is not only a resource for training and information but also a location to connect with like-minded people, which is essential at a time when faculty are increasingly called upon to protect vulnerable students.
Statistics Canada recently released its comprehensive reports on education, covering a wide range of topics, including overall education attainment and the skills mismatches and earnings potential of those with bachelor’s degrees. There was good news and bad news.
StatsCan reported that in 2016, 54 per cent of Canadians aged 25 to 64 had either college or university qualifications. Canada continued to rank first among the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development in the proportion of college and university graduates. That’s good news.
Many higher education institutions use student satisfaction surveys given at the end of a course to measure course and instructor quality. But is that really a true measure of quality? All things being equal, an instructor who teaches a rigorous course will likely score much lower than an instructor whose course is a little less demanding.
Then there’s the whole timing of the satisfaction surveys. For the most part, students are simply glad the course is over (even if they liked it) and put little thought or time into completing the survey. Unless of course they know they failed, in which case you will get a detailed assessment of how you are boring, inflexible, out of touch, or otherwise unfit to teach.
As a minority group on university campuses, the unique needs of mature students can be easily overlooked. It is important that the term “mature students” does not disguise the heterogeneity of this group: “…it is erroneous to speak of ‘the adult learner’ as if there is a generic adult that can represent all adults.”1 However, amongst this varied group of students, there are common
concerns that they share. This policy sets out students’ priorities in increasing the visibility of mature students on campus as well as optimizing their educational experience.
Mature students need more recognition of the different hurdles they face in achieving success. These can include situational barriers like a lack of time, lack of money, health issues, or dependant care,2 as well as attitudinal or dispositional barriers, including the fear of failure or alienation. Lastly, they also face systemic barriers such as restrictive course offerings and
availability of instructors or support services outside of regular business hours.3
Paid Parental Leave LESSONS FROM OECD COUNTRIES AND SELECTED U.S. STATES
The United States is at a crossroads in its policies towards the family and gender equality. Currently America provides basic support for children, fathers, and mothers in the form of unpaid parental leave, child-related tax breaks, and limited public childcare. Alternatively, the United States’ OECD peers empower families through paid parental leave and comprehensive investments in infants and children.
How to resolve the top enrolment barriers that decrease student satisfaction and negatively impact enrolment efforts.
They’re called “Enrolment Barriers” for a good reason. If your institution isn’t doing all that it can to remove them, there’s a good chance your future students will enrol, uninhibited, at a PSE institution down the road, and your current student satisfaction will be underwhelming. Looking for common barriers? Poor relationships with transactionally focused front line staff, disingenuous interactions with parents, behind-the-times processes/communications and siloed operations are just a few to seek out.
The not-for-profit (NFP) and charitable sector in Canada represents an average of 8.1 percent Gross Domestic Product (GDP), employs over 2,000,000 people and boasts over 170,000 NFP organizations, of which 85,000 are registered charities (Imagine Canada, 2012-2013). While from a donor perspective, Canadians gave approximately $10.6 billion in 2010 (Turcotte, 2012). In Ontario, there are over 46,000 NFPs, contributing over $50 billion to the GDP and engages over 5 million volunteers annually (The Partnership Project: Strengthening Ontario’s Not-For-Profit Sector, 2011). From a post-secondary education perspective, Canadians donated $117 million to “Universities and Colleges” and $309 million to “Education and Research” in 2010, totaling $426 million dollars. This represents 4 percent of the $10.6 billion donated (Turcotte, 2012). These two categories were combined in order to account for higher education institutions that teach, research and provide other educational services such as continuing education and vocational training. While the distribution of these funds between all individual institutions is not readily available, the author’s analysis of tax return information between universities and colleges in the Greater Toronto
Area (GTA) reveals the universities dwarf the colleges in acquiring these private dollars. The author has compiled a chart, based on 2010 CRA returns for universities and colleges in the GTA which further illustrates the disparity between these institutions. The following chart compares university and college fundraising results (Appendix A).
When it comes to shared governance, is OK good enough? That’s the question behind -- and the title of -- a new report from the Association of Governing Boards of Universities and Colleges. It’s based in part on input from a focus group of faculty members, conducted earlier this year in conjunction with the American Association of University Professors. Three hundred presidents and several thousand board members weighed in via surveys; their feedback makes up the bulk of the report.
Since the mid-1990s, there has been an alarming trend on college campuses nationwide: an increase in the number of students seeking help for serious mental health problems at campus counseling centers. In the past decade this shift has not only solidified, but it also has reached increasingly higher levels.
Certaines données utilisées dans ce guide sont tirées du projet de recherche-action Modes de travail et de collaboration
à l’ère d’Internet réalisé sous l’égide du CEFRIO. Ce projet visait essentiellement à étudier la mise en place,
le fonctionnement, l’évolution et les résultats générés par une série de communautés de pratique virtuelles. Rappelons
qu’il poursuivait trois grands objectifs :