In contemporary higher education there is a growing demand for academ-ics to increase their publication output. This requirement raises the question of how institutions can best support a sustainable academic writing culture, which is needed to challenge the assumption that all academics know how to write for publication. This case study examines two models used in a Faculty of Education to support writing groups for academic staff. From the analysis of reflective journals, interviews, and field notes, we identified four factors that influence the success of writing groups, as well as six conditions that sup-port the development of sustainable academic writing. We have learned from the study that the success of a writing group is predicated on a collaborative practice that blends relational, communal, and institutional forms of sustain-ability in a purposeful, engaged, and reflexive way.
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.
The Strada-Gallup 2017 College Student Survey declares that “college students do not feel prepared for the workforce.”
Brandon Busteed who directs Gallup’s higher education research tells Inside Higher Ed, “Students are not nearly as prepared as they could or should be, and they actually know it while they’re in college.”
Speaking to an audience at Western University last week, Prime Minister Trudeau earned a round of appreciative applause by referring to it as the “Harvard of Canada.” It’s a harmless enough conceit: “Harvard of the North” t-shirts are sold at university souvenir shops across Canada. But of course, there is no Canadian equivalent of Harvard, with its prestige, limited enrollment and its $60,000 tuition. And really, it’s just as well.
When it is remarked that Canada does not have a university with the international stature of a Harvard or an Oxford, it is usually with an air of wistful regret. Or perhaps it’s used as another example of how Canadians are in thrall to the “tall poppy syndrome”: a tendency to disparage the achievements of those who have excelled. And sometimes the lack of an elite university is seen as evidence of how Canadians under-appreciate the benefits of higher education.
Colleges have a big stake in the outcome of the lawsuit that three publishers, Cambridge University Press, Oxford University Press, and Sage Publications, brought against Georgia State University officials for copyright infringement. The lawsuit, now in its eighth year, challenged GSU’s policy that allowed faculty members to upload excerpts (mainly chapters) of in-copyright books for students to read and download from online course repositories.
Four years ago, a trial court held that 70 of the 75 challenged uses were fair uses. Two years ago, an appellate court sent the case back for a reassessment under a revised fair-use standard. The trial court has just recently ruled that of the 48 claims remaining in the case, only four uses, each involving multiple chapters, infringed. The question now is, What should be the remedy for those four infringements?
Partnerships between public and private colleges, which have brought thousands of new international students to Ontario, carried unacceptable risks to the students, the province and the quality of education, says a report for the provincial government that led to a moratorium on the programs.
Public perception has become reality -- reputations are made and destroyed overnight thanks to the power of social and online media and an emboldened public who has seen Twitter bring down corporate titans and foment socio-political unrest around the world.
Schools can no longer be certain they’ll avoid the media spotlight or trust that their hard-earned reputations will protect them. In 2015, the University of Missouri faced a maelstrom of hunger strikes by the football team, racial incidents and massive protests. “Official inaction” from the administration catalyzed the initial protests, and subsequent attempts at reconciliation, including the resignation of the chancellor and president and appointment of a chief diversity officer, came too late to appease discontented students, alumni and community members. Two years
later, as recently reported by the New York Times, the university’s enrollment is down more than 35 percent and
budget cuts have forced the temporary closure of seven dormitories and elimination of 400 staff positions.
Job enjoyment and stability are not mutually exclusive.
Stress does funny things to our thoughts. We’re all familiar with the fight or flight response and its ability to bring out our inner hunter or sprinter. But when we’re considering different work options, stress seems to induce an enjoy or be practical response. We assume that we can pursue either something inherently rewarding, or something stable and practical, but never the twain shall meet.
I’m not claiming that all jobs are equally stable, or that you should do what you love and expect that the money will, indeed, follow. But the assumption that enjoyment and stability are mutually exclusive is, frankly, a terrible starting point. Don’t consign yourself to a job you’ll dislike without doing thorough research, because stress can make underresearched assumptions seem really, really compelling.
Have you ever wondered if your students are as concerned about their learning as you are? If you prioritize student learning, you may be the only person in your classroom with that goal. Learning-centered teachers seek to coauthor classroom experiences with their students, whereas students may seek only to be taught passively. How might you inspire your students to share accountability for their learning? These five considerations can help you teach your students to be learning centered, too.
When Harvard University announced Lawrence S. Bacow as its president-in-waiting on Sunday, the institution focused heavily on his illustrious academic history, past presidential experience at Tufts University and family story as the son of immigrants.
Less discussed was Bacow’s age. He’s 66, about four years older than the average college president. If he stays at Harvard for 10 years -- the tenure he has previously said is about right for a president -- he will be stepping down in his mid-70s.
To have the most impactful mental health and wellness services at our institutions, we must go beyond frontline staff. Everyone has a role to play in supporting student mental health and wellness.
The university sector developed More Feet on the Ground to teach faculty, staff and student leaders how to recognize, respond, and refer students experiencing mental health issues on campus. The educational website has been so successful that CICMH is managing the website moving forward and its scope is being expanded to include Ontario colleges.
Generation Z is destined to be the most researched of all generations in history. We understand consumer habits, how Generation Z communicates, even the exact details of how the media influences them. Living under a digital microscope, todays 15- to 18-year-olds are savvy. They have a comprehensive understanding of what they want an
es to technology and education. And with this comes great expectations.
This study examines the George Coles bursary program—a financial aid plan designed to “keep residents at home” so they can attend university, by provid-ing a bursary in their first year of university following high school graduation. The study offers insight into higher education students’ financial circumstanc-es, thereby suggesting policy direction for governments and higher education institutions wishing to retain talent and support student financing. The findings show that the resident students considered in the study appeared to value the bursary. However, none of the key metrics related to participation in or conver-sion to the home institution indicated that the bursary impacted enrolment or participation. This research highlights the importance of utilizing financial aid in combination with other policies to help students access higher education.
Education Secretary Betsy DeVos says her policy views are "very aligned" with President Trump's, including the belief that four-year colleges are not serving students well.
This article proposes a methodology for measuring institutional diversity and applies it to Ontario’s university sector. This study first used hierarchical cluster analysis, which suggested there has been very little change in diver- sity between 1994 and 2010 as universities were clustered in three groups for both years. However, by adapting Birnbaum’s (1983) diversity matrix
meth- odology to Ontario’s university sector, the author appears to have found a decrease in systemic diversity (differences in the type of institution and size of institution; Birnbaum, 1983) and climate diversity (differences in campus environment and culture; Birnbaum, 1983) between 1994 and 2010. Policy implications resulting from this study are also considered.
This article measures gender pay gaps in Ontario’s public post-secondary education sector from 1996 to 2016 using the Public Sector Salary Disclosure Data. We find gaps widening among all faculty ranks. Men were paid on average 2.06%, 2.14%, and 5.26% more than their women colleagues for all employees, university teaching staff, and deans, respectively. We also conduct a Blinder- Oaxaca decomposition to measure the source of gendered salary differentials. Pay gaps persist during this time period despite controlling for the literature’s most common explanations, including the “pipeline effect.” Our results additionally
imply that women’s years of experience in academia do not mitigate the observed pay gaps. Suggestions for future research include increasing the scope of our study to factor in finer details such as labour productivity.
ew report on transfer of struggling students from universities to community colleges finds students benefit from moving in nontraditional direction.
I'll be the first to admit that I haven't been teaching at my best this semester. Oh, there have been some good classes. And I think I'm finally getting a handle on the one group of students who don't want to speak up in class. But in general it feels like I'm going through the motions a little bit, not fully reaching as many students as I have in the past, talking too much from the front of the room. I have a theory as to why this is happening.
This is my fourth semester at the University of Iowa teaching rhetoric to mostly first-year students. After years of adjuncting, it's great to be able to teach the same course again and again. I'm able to learn from my mistakes and improve semester to semester. Even better, prepping for class takes less and less time each semester. I keep an archive of class activities from previous semesters in Scrivener, and I can quickly arrange a few of them to make up a whole class period. It's great.
Boundary issues: should a student get a tattoo if it advances her research?
Would you consider getting a tattoo on the basis that it could help you to write your PhD? Or tolerate sexism in order to secure a strong case study for your research?
Such dilemmas faced by doctoral researchers are explored in a recent study that examines the challenges of
conducting qualitative research.
Students cheat. Educators struggle to respond, sometimes blaming themselves for not making courses sufficiently interesting or relevant and sometimes engaging in a battle of wits or technologies with their students to prevent cheating. Sometimes we in higher education try to address cheating as a moral problem and sometimes as a pedagogical one. Another way to understand cheating, however, is to borrow an insight from Bill Clinton's 1992 presidential campaign, namely, “It’s the economy, stupid.”