While it requires a significant amount of time and persistence, completing a PhD is not now – nor has it ever been – a guaranteed path to a lucrative end, and its general value has come under increasing scrutiny in recent years. This paper is written for aspiring doctoral students, current doctoral students or candidates, recent doctoral graduates, as well as their families and friends. It provides detailed information about the evolution of the PhD and of the broader labour market and educational environment in which it is embedded. The analyses provided in this paper also lead to recommendations to government and institutions about PhD programs.
As the number of faculty members whose position lies outside the tenure system continues to rise at American universities, college deans, department chairs and program directors must consider how to support the careers of these colleagues. The differences that commonly exist between the opportunities available to tenure-system faculty and those offered to other academics can be a recurring source of friction. That not only erodes unit cohesion and climate, but it may also impede efforts to retain valued long-term employees who are not in the tenure system.
Since the configurations and names of these people and positions vary widely across disciplines and institutions, I will denote them collectively as “academic staff.” At Michigan State University, we have several categories of faculty members who work outside the tenure system -- including outside professionals in business, law, medicine or media who teach an occasional career-oriented course in their specialty; instructors with full teaching loads and short-term contracts; and individuals with a mix of teaching, advising or other duties who have long-term appointments. As a dean, I have seen that as my college hires more faculty members outside the tenure system, identifying ways to support such academic staff professionally is an increasingly common topic of conversation. And as an associate provost, as well, charged with advancing the careers of all MSU faculty and academic staff, I am finding support for academics outside the tenure system to be an area of institutional concern.
This article explores for a broad audience the changing landscape of education in the digital age, the changing roles of teachers in a technology rich education system, and the skills, knowledge, values, and ways of thinking that teacher will need to have to support students’ social, emotional, and intellectual development in a digital learning environment.
The ability of Ontario college students to transfer credits to the university sector in Ontario has been an ongoing issue for many years. Progress toward a more seamless postsecondary education system has been slow and steady (CRSM, 2015), culminating in the announcement in 2011 by Ontario’s Ministry of Training, Colleges and Universities (MTCU) of a new provincial credit transfer framework, committing $73.7 million over five years.
This report describes provincial trends in college transfer to university using data from the Ontario College Graduate Satisfaction Survey (GSS) for the years 2007 to 2015. The study tracked the volume of graduates moving between college and university, and their characteristics and experience of transfer. Of the 694,379 graduates, 444,451 participated in the GSS, for an average response rate of 64%.
New ideas germinate everywhere, seeking to force their way into the light, to find an application in life; everywhere they are opposed by the inertia of those whose interest it is to maintain the old order; they suffocate in the stifling atmosphere of prejudice and traditions.
Effort and habit are instrumental to learning and writing, but they are often dimly lit in our grading systems. That light needs to brighten with the help of new research and popular literature that highlight how essential habit, effort, and perseverance are to learning. I’ve used an effort-aware grading system in my teaching for some time now, a B- grading contract that locks hardworking students into a minimum final grade of B. For grades rising above B, the quality of the writing is the focus (the product), but only for students who fulfill the contract (the process).
Let us begin by being clear about what a start-up is.A start-up is generally a temporary organization designed to search for a repeatable and scalable business model. It may be a service company for seniors, a technology company or a company selling
a particular product. As a start- up, it does all the work needed to get to and stay in a market and learn what it will take to go from a small business to a medium-sized, fast growing business and then to a large business. A start-up is a temporary since the way it works will not be the way the medium and larger scale versions of the business work. Think of Apple, which began with two
young men building interesting machines and selling them via friends and their social networks, and look at Apple now! Think of Costco / Price Club, which began in 1976 with a single warehouse, and look it at now – a very different kind of global business.
A start-up of this kind is not the same as a small business offering a product in a single market – a one-off business. The strategic intention of a start-up of the kind we are describing here is to move from small to large, from local to national and then global, and from a single product to a range of related products.
Presidential terminations and resignations are nothing new, even in the staid world of academia. Yet, rarely have they played out in so public a manner as the abrupt departure of president Arvind Gupta at the University of British Columbia in the summer of 2015 or the messy dismissal of Ilene Busch-Vishniac as president of the University of Saskatchewan a year earlier. Quebec had its own drama in May 2015, with the resignation of Nadia Ghazzali, rector at Université du Québec à Trois-Rivières, following a critical report by Quebec’s auditor general. All three leaders left before completing their first mandates.
Amidst the turmoil, Peter Stoicheff was named the 11th president of U of S, a position he took up in late October 2015. A former English professor and a classical guitar composer with two recordings to his name, Dr. Stoicheff had served as dean of the college of arts and science at U of S for four years and knew the internal workings of the institution and its culture well. But there was a lot he didn’t know, he readily admits, and that weighed on him.
A decade ago, few universities thought strategically about their brand. Now, as the market for academic talent, funding, and recognition heats up, the need has become acute. Universities recognize the necessity of building appreciation for what makes them unique. Yet while some universities may be regarded as “great” brands, most aren’t. And it may be because of the ways in which higher education approaches branding.
Students at the University of Waterloo know Chase Graham took his own life.
They may never have met him. They may not know he was a brilliant student or that he had a sharp sense of humour under a shy, quiet exterior.
But they know he died by suicide at school on March 20.
This paper presents an empirical analysis of the Ontario-led strategic man-date agreement (SMA) planning exercise. Focusing on the self-generated stra-tegic mandates of five universities (McMaster, Ottawa, Queen’s, Toronto, and Western), we asked how universities responded to this exercise of strategic visioning? The answer to this question is important because the SMA process is unique in Ontario, and universities’ responses revealed aspects of their self-understanding. We adopted an organizational theory approach to understand the structure and nature of universities as organizations and explored how they might confront pressures for change. Analysis of the universities’ own proposed strategic mandates found elements of both conformity and striking differentiation, even within this sample of five research-intensive university SMAs. Directions for further work on this planning exercise and on higher education reform more generally are discussed.
Abstract Religious colleges and universities make up a substantial segment of the higher education landscape in North America, but the incidence of sexual violence on these campuses remains understudied. This study estimates the incidence of sexual violence on independent Christian campuses using a sample of part-time and full-time undergraduate students (N = 668) from eight private Christian colleges in Ontario, Canada. Using two widely used measures of sexual violence enabled comparisons with studies of self-reported incidents at secular and public colleges and universities. The findings show that 18% of women at religious colleges reported experiencing unwanted sexual contact within the past year, compared to studies of self-reported rates on secular campuses ranging from 21.4% to 31.4%. Exploratory investigation of factors related to victimization suggests that religious colleges may provide a “moral community” that could reduce the risk of sexual violence.
Résumé Quoique les universités religieuses contribuent considérablement à l’ensemble de l’enseignement supérieur en Amérique du Nord, la fréquence des agressions sexuelles sur leurs campus demeure peu étudiée. La présente étude estime le nombre d’agressions sexuelles sur des campus chrétiens indépendants à l’aide d’un échantillon d’étudiant(e)s de premier cycle à temps partiel et à temps plein (N = 688) provenant de huit universités chrétiennes privées en Ontario (Canada). L’utilisation de deux échelles d’agressions sexuelles fréquemment utilisées a permis de comparer notre étude à d’autres études qui traitent de la fréquence d’agressions sexuelles déclarées par les victimes dans les universités laïques et publiques. Nos résultats démontrent que dans les universités religieuses, 18 % des femmes ont rapporté des contacts sexuels non désirés au cours de l’année dernière, comparativement à de 21,4 à 31,4 % des femmes des universités laïques ayant rapporté des agressions sexuelles. Des facteurs liés à la victimisation suggèrent la possibilité que les universités religieuses puissent offrir une « communauté morale » qui diminue les risques d’agression sexuelle.
Study finds gender of instructors influences evaluations they receive, even if they have fooled students (in an online course) about whether they are men or women.
"Plan for the students you actually have, not those you wish you had, or think you used to have, or think you used to be like."
So John N. Gardner, the creator of the term "first-year experience," advised college officials charged with making sure that the experience is a good one. In other words, be realistic; don’t expect too much of students.
That mind-set contrasts with the one evoked by the New Yorker writer David Denby in his new book, Lit Up: One Reporter. Three Schools. Twenty-Four Books That Can Change Lives. The New York Times last week noted, "Lit Up is a refreshing lesson in what motivates students and why not to dumb down reading lists." Denby opens a window into the classrooms of several gifted high-school English teachers who assign Faulkner, Orwell, Frankl, Dostoevsky, Hemingway, Shakespeare, Poe, and Twain — and whose love of reading is contagious to their teen students.
How do you teach the same concepts and skills to students with diverse abilities and interests? Different learning profiles? And how do you do that in real classrooms, with limited time to plan?
Early in my career, I sat on a doctoral committee in a field outside my discipline for the first time. I recall being startled at the dissertation defense when professors in the young man’s department began delivering scorching assessments of his theory, method, cases, and conclusions. As the incendiaries kept flying I grew concerned about his health. He whitened, started sweating visibly, and several times laid his forehead on the table. When it came my turn to speak, I froze and ended up sputtering, "Well, you have answered all my questions!" and fell silent.
Background/Context: Research indicates that across democratic societies, teachers face numerous intellectual and emotional challenges when handling controversial topics in the classroom. Less attention, however, has been paid to how teachers’ willingness to teach controversial topics intersects with political and other societal factors in different sociopolitical milieu and, in particular, in an authoritarian–democratic and culturally diverse state like Singapore. Focus of Study: This study focused on constraints to the teaching of controversial topics relating to diversity and the manner in which teachers navigated their personal beliefs amidst the evolving contours of public and official discourses in Singapore. By attending to the intersections of teachers’ beliefs, state policies, and other sociopolitical factors, we aimed to inform scholarship on the teaching of controversial topics and illuminate states’ powers to demarcate the discursive spaces of teachers.
Recently, McGill University adopted its policy against sexual violence (PDF). While celebrating this development, I admit that well before this policy was drafted and adopted, I was skeptical about its utility. As a law professor who assesses rules and authority from a feminist critical perspective, I was doubtful about the potential of an institutional policy to address campus sexual violence. To my mind, a policy seemed like a naive and simplistic way of responding to the broad and complex challenge of sexual violence, which is rooted in forces that lie well beyond any single university’s control.
All transitions are difficult. But there is no doubt that following a long-serving leader brings particular challenges. We tend to focus on the brief administrations that so many leaders in higher education are serving right now. We’ve all witnessed such short tenures -- leaders moving on to other opportunities or unfortunately encountering difficulties that result in other people making that decision for them. But among the key transition issues discussed less often are the challenges that occur at the retirement of long-serving leaders -- in many cases, the “founding” deans or directors of key organizations or departments.
The University of Waterloo will decide this fall whether a standardized system for course evaluations can balance
student demands for more feedback on their classroom learning with faculty concerns about the impact of bias and
evidence that such surveys may not improve student outcomes.