The following exercise will ask you 50 questions about your leadership style, and then give you an idea of your typical styles.
If you are still a student you might like to answer the questions as you would if you were a manager in an rganisation, rather than the way you would if, for example, you were president of a student society where the leadership style is more casual than that in most work environments.
One of the important questions to consider in a review of policy for postsecondary education is what kind o f system do we need. To provide a reasonably complete answer to that question would require addressing many different dimensions of postsecondary education including structures, processes, and relationships. In this paper, I will concentrate on two important and closely related subsidiary questions within the broader question of what kind of system we need. Those subsidiary questions are what is the most appropriate mix of different types of postsecondary institutions, and what should be their relationships with one another?1 As those are pretty large questions, within them my principal focus will be even narrower, on the balance and relationship between universities and community colleges.
Community college systems were established across North America from the early 1960s through the early 1970s. The new systems had two principal models: in one model, the college combined lower-division, university-level general
education with technical education programs; in the other, most or all of the colleges were intended to concentrate on technical education. Ontario was the largest of the provinces and states in North America that opted for the second model. Many of the issues that planners confronted when designing these college systems have either persisted or re-emerged in recent years. This
article re-examines the debate on the design of Ontario’s colleges that took place when they were founded and considers its implications for the present.
While the most traditional metric, Gross Domestic Product (GDP), measures all goods and services produced by a country, it has two critical shortcomings. First, by focusing exclusively on the economy, GDP fails to capture areas of our lives that we care about most like education, health, environmental quality, and the relationships we have with others. Second, it does not identify the costs of economic growth — like pollution.
To create a robust and more revealing measure of our social progress, the Canadian Index of Wellbeing (CIW) has been working with experts and everyday Canadians since 1999 to determine how we are really doing in the areas of our lives that matter most. The CIW measures overall wellbeing based on 64 indicators covering eight domains of vital importance to Canadians: Education, Community Vitality, Healthy Populations, Democratic Engagement, Environment, Leisure and Culture, Time Use, and Living Standards. The CIW’s comprehensive index of overall wellbeing tracks progress provincially and nationally and allows comparisons to GDP.
Comparing the CIW and GDP between 1994 and 2010 reveals a chasm between our wellbeing and economic growth both nationally and provincially. Over the 17-year period, GDP has grown almost four times more than our overall wellbeing. The trends clearly show that even when times are good, overall wellbeing does not keep up with economic growth and when times are bad, the impact on our wellbeing is even harsher. We have to ask ourselves, is this good enough?
Key Findings
This report highlights the importance of college readiness for persisting in college to timely
degree completion. Primary findings suggest that:
• Being better prepared academically for college improves a student’s chances of completing a college degree.
• Using multiple measures of college readiness better informs the likelihood of a student persisting and succeeding in college.
• College readiness reduces gaps in persistence and degree completion among racial/ethnic and family income groups.
• Early monitoring of readiness is associated with increased college success.
ABSTRACT
Community college systems were established across North America from the early 1960s through the early 1970s. The new systems had two principal models: in one model, the college combined lower-division, university-level general education with technical education programs; in the other, most or all of the colleges were intended to concentrate on technical education. Ontario was the largest of the provinces and states in North America that opted for the second model. Many of the issues that planners confronted when designing these college systems have either persisted or re-emerged in recent years. This
article re-examines the debate on the design of Ontario’s colleges that took place when they were founded and considers its implications for the present.
RÉSUMÉ
Depuis le début des années 1960 et jusqu’au début des années 1970, lorsqu’on créait des réseaux de collèges communautaires partout en Amérique du Nord, deux modèles majeurs étaient proposés pour ces nouveaux réseaux. Dans un des modèles, le collège combinait l’enseignement général universitaire de division inférieure avec les programmes d’enseignement technique ; dans l’autre, la plupart des collèges, sinon tous, se concentraient sur l’enseignement technique. L’Ontario était la plus importante parmi les provinces et les États en Amérique du Nord qui ait opté pour le deuxième modèle. Beaucoup des défis auxquels les planifi cateurs ont été confrontés lorsqu’ils ont conçu le réseau des collèges sont encore présents ou sont réapparus au cours des dernières années. Cet article réexamine l’ancien débat sur la conception des collèges de l’Ontario et considère ses implications actuelles.
This research uses the Youth in Transition Survey, Reading Cohort to compare participation in postsecondary education (PSE)in Ontario to other Canadian regions. We begin by presenting access rates by region, which reveals some substantial differences. University participation rates in Ontario are in about the middle of the pack, while college rates are relatively high. We then undertake an econometric analysis, which reveals that the effects of parental income are quite strong in the Atlantic provinces but much weaker elsewhere, including within Ontario. We also find that the relationship between high school grades and Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) test scores (measures of academic performance and ability differ by region and are generally strongest in Ontario. From this perspective,Ontario would appear to have a relatively “meritocratic†system, where those who are more qualified are more likely to go to university and where attendance rates are less affected by family income. Interestingly, the effects of parental education, which are generally much stronger than those of family income, are similar across regions. Understanding the reasons underlying these patterns might warrant further investigation.
This research was funded by the Higher Education Quality Council of Ontario (HEQCO), which also provided useful feedback throughout the project, but the authors retain all responsibility for the paper and opinions expressed therein. This work is based on earlier research carried out for the Canada Millennium Scholarship Foundation through the MESA project.
Insight into Impressive Practices in Career Services: A Reference Guide is the second of two reports summarizing the findings of a CERIC-funded study that sought to establish the importance publicly funded universities and colleges place on the provision of career development services and to highlight particularly impressive models of career service provision across the country.
Specifically, CERIC’s interest in conducting this study was two-fold:
1. To understand the landscape of career service models across Canada
2. To examine the level of institutional commitment to the provision of career services
As the threat of MOOCs and for-profit education fades, so too does the sense of urgency that drives innovation.
Yet anyone who thinks that a decade from now higher education will look much as it does today is
sadly mistaken.
Higher education starts earlier than ever as students earn more early college/dual degree and AP credits. Students increasingly accumulate credits from multiple institutions. Undergraduate introductory survey courses lose enrollment, and, as they do, the cross-subsidies that helped support upper division courses decline. In the humanities, the loss of introductory course enrollment.
contributes to a decline in the number of majors.
The reasons why students need to be involved and engaged when they attend college are well established. Engagement can be the difference between completing a degree and dropping out. Research has sought to identify what makes student involvement more likely. Factors like student-faculty interaction, active and collaborative learning experiences, involvement in extracurricular activities, and living on campus have all been shown to make a difference. Not surprisingly, faculty play a critical role in student engagement … from the obvious: facilitating discussions in the classroom; to the often overlooked: maximizing those brief encounters we have with students outside of class. This special report features 15 articles that provide perspectives and advice for keeping students actively engaged in learning activities while fostering more meaningful interactions between students and faculty members, and among the students themselves.
For example, in “Student Engagement: Trade-offs and Payoffs” author E Shelley Reid, associate professor at George Mason University, talks about how to craft engagement-focused questions rather than knowledge questions, and explains her willingness to take chances in ceding some control over students’ learning.
In “The Truly Participatory Seminar” authors Sarah M. Leupen and Edward H. Burtt, Jr., of Ohio Wesleyan University, outline their solution for ensuring all students in their upper division seminar course participate in discussion at some level.
In “Reminders for Improving Classroom Discussion” Roben Torosyan, associate director of the Center for Academic Excellence at Fairfield University, offers very specific advice on balancing student voices, reframing discussions, and probing below the surface of group discussions.
And finally, in “Living for the Light Bulb” authors Aaron J. Nurick and David H. Carhart of Bentley College provide tips on setting the stage for that delightful time in class “when the student’s entire body says ‘Aha! Now I see it!’” Who wouldn’t like to see more light bulbs going on more often? One of the most challenging tasks instructors face is keeping students engaged. Building Student Engagement: 15 Strategies for the College Classroom will help you meet that challenge while ensuring your classroom is a positive and productive learning environment.
The primary objectives of this paper were to determine whether there are significant gaps in Ontario’s postsecondary education system with respect to education and research activities, with particular attention to activities connoted by the term “polytechnic”, and if so, to consider how to address such gaps. In response to the first part of our task, we identified three major gaps in Ontario’s postsecondary education system: a free standing, degree-granting, primarily teaching-oriented institution that concentrates on undergraduate education; an open university that would expand accessibility and enable Learners to combine credits from different institutions and different types of learning experiences; and effective pathways for students who start their postsecondary education in a college to attain a baccalaureate degree and be able, if they are so
inclined, to continue on to graduate study.
We did not find compelling evidence that there is a shortage of opportunity for polytechnic education in
Ontario. Presently students are able to draw upon Ryerson University and the University of Ontario Institute of
Technology (UOIT), a modest but growing number of joint university-college programs, and baccalaureate and diploma programs of the colleges. In addition, many students create a polytechnic experience for themselves through transfer from a university to a college or from a college to a university, though more needs to be done to improve opportunities of the latter type.
Also, we think that there are some other good reasons for not designating some colleges as polytechnic institutions. The term polytechnic is fraught with ambiguity, and thus adding a new sector of postsecondary institutions with that name could be more confusing than helpful for prospective students. The institutions in British Columbia and Alberta that use the term polytechnic, either formally or informally, have since their founding been formally differentiated from other college sector institutions in their province and have a history of specialization in technology-based programming. No college sector institutions in Ontario have had a differentiated role like the institutes of technology in British Columbia and Alberta. We are aware also that five
colleges in Ontario have been seeking the polytechnic designation. In regard to both labour market needs and practices in other North American jurisdictions, it is hard to see a justification for adding that many polytechnic institutions to the provincial postsecondary education system, especially when four of them would be in the Greater Toronto Area (GTA). We appreciate that many colleges across Canada, including in Ontario, have made valuable contributions to industry through their applied research activities. Our impression is that the expertise and interaction with industry that fosters these contributions is largely situational and contextual related to the existence of particular faculty in particular programs and institutions.
Accordingly, we do not believe that designating some colleges as polytechnics is necessary to maintain or enhance the capability of the college sector to make such contributions.
While we do not believe that there are compelling arguments for designating some colleges as polytechnics, we are mindful of the contribution that could be made by enabling at least a few colleges to have a more substantial and broader role in offering baccalaureate programs if they are able to demonstrate that they meet the conditions required for such activity. Based upon our examination of the issues outlined above, we review a number of possible policy options to address the predicted demand for increased access to university degree programs in the GTA including: 1)
creating satellite campuses of existing universities; 2) creating new universities that are of the same type as existing universities; 3) creating new universities of a new type focusing on undergraduate study and with a limited role in research; 4) providing selected colleges with a new substantial role in baccalaureate programming; 5) providing colleges with a greater role in transfer programs in basic university subjects, such as arts and science; and 6) creating an open university. We review each of these options and discuss factors that should be considered by government.
THE REPORT
Immigrants will represent nearly 100 per cent of net labour market growth in Canada by the year 2011.1 More than ever, employers recognize the need to effectively integrate immigrants into the workplace and they seek solutions to leverage the talents and contributions immigrants bring to the Canadian economy.
From January to March 2009, Colleges Ontario and 12 colleges consulted with employers, ethno-cultural business organizations, business associations and unions to find out their views on employing immigrants and how colleges can support the transition of immigrants to the province’s workforce. Input was obtained through a variety of formats including facilitated round-table discussions, one-on-one dialogues, and an online questionnaire. The purpose of these consultations was to obtain advice from employers on how colleges can better address language needs for the workplace and support immigrant integration.
Colleges engaged in discussions with 218 organizations. These organizations represented a wide cross-section of large, medium and small businesses in five industry sectors that included health care, hospitality, science and technology, construction and manufacturing. Many of these organizations were interested in participating because they understand the valuable role of immigrants in helping companies respond to current labour and consumer market realities.
This report presents the findings from these consultations, offering a snapshot of the experiences of the participants, and outlining some suggestions on how colleges can play an even greater role in effectively integrating immigrants into the workplace.
CONSULTING WITH EMPLOYERS
As part of the Language Skills for the Workplace2 project funded by the federal government, colleges had an opportunity to hold discussions with employers on language needs and immigrant integration. Participants were asked about:
• their experiences in the recruitment, hiring, retention and promotion of immigrants
. training, education and development priorities in the workplace • occupation-specific and workplace-specific language needs
. ways that colleges can effectively help employers in the integration of immigrants
into employment.
Colleges held discussions with their local employer community and Colleges Ontario contacted larger provincewide employers and associations. There were 218 unique organizations that participated: 198 employers, 17 associations and three unions (See Appendix for list of participants). Employers from a broad range of sectors were invited to participate. Approximately 60 per cent of participants were from small- and medium-sized businesses and 40 per cent were large employers (employers with more than 500 employees).
Lead-Deadwood Elementary School in the Black Hills of Western South Dakota has a problem. Students need science.
Real science for real kids — the kind that sparks students’ imagination. Second grade teacher Carol Greco contacts the world’s largest underground laboratory, the Deep Underground Science and Engineering Lab (DUSEL). One mile under South Dakota, the lab is not accessible to students. But this doesn’t stop Dr. Warren Matthews, DUSEL’s cyber-infrastructure chief engineer. As a scientist, Warren knows engaging elementary students with science means finding a “hook.” That hook comes in the form of puppets — and not the brown paper bag variety.
Patty Petrey Dees, distance learning director for the Center for Puppetry Arts in Atlanta, Ga., starts to work her digital magic and begins researching what scientific content the lab can use for Carol’s classroom. Patty envisions nanotechnology
dancing in virtual micro cities and students playing the role of engineers in a virtual mission control room as their astronaut puppets explore deep space. This is a far cry from the current most popular elementary school distance learning topics — the lifecycle of a butterfly and paleontology lessons from puppetized dinosaurs — at the Center for Puppetry Arts.
Watching first graders wiggle and giggle at the crystallization movements of crafted butterfly puppets is good, but watching them explore the world of dark matter through puppets is better.
This is extreme puppetry through technology with digital content that has supersized itself. For Carol, the ability to incorporate a sense of discovery and real-world problem solving into her classroom is critical. She wants to bring difficult science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) topics closer to home. Using every available technology in her classroom, from the electronic whiteboard to individual laptops, she sets the virtual puppet stage to bring STEM out of the physical text and into the virtual world. The infrastructure that seamlessly allows this to happen stays in the background, empowering Carol to teach, Warren to share his scientific expertise, and Patty to provide the instructional tools that link learning to laughing as the puppets play. This type of education really rocks. Teaching difficult STEM topics to elementary students does not immediately conjure up puppets and interactive video conferencing as critical tools, yet these technologies link the arts and science in a way that fully engages students’ imaginations.
Second graders cannot tour the remote South Dakota lab, but they can do the next best thing by inviting the lab to
come to them. Best of all, the lab is accessible through technology and content that they understand.
Academic dishonesty is a persistent problem in institutions of higher education, with numerous short- and long-term implications. This study examines undergraduate students’ self-reported engagement in acts of academic dishonesty using data from a sample of 321 participants attending a public university in a western Canadian city during the fall of 2007. Various factors were assessed for their influence on students’ extent of academic dishonesty. More than one-half of respondents engaged in at least one of three types of dishonest behaviours surveyed during their tenure in university. Faculty of enrolment, strategies for learning, perceptions of peers’ cheating and their requests for help, and perceptions and evaluations of academic dishonesty made unique contributions to the prediction of academic dishonesty. High self-efficacy acted as a protective factor that interacted with instrumental motives to study to reduce students’ propensity to engage in dishonest academic behaviours. Implications of these findings for institutional interventions are briefly discussed.
RÉSUMÉ
Le comportement académique malhonnête persiste dans les institutions d’enseignement supérieur, et ses implications à court et à long terme sont nombreuses. La présente étude examine l’adoption d’un comportement académique malhonnête par des étudiants de premier cycle, grâce aux données d’un échantillon de 321 participants qui fréquentaient une université publique dans une ville de l’ouest canadien à l’automne 2007. Différents facteurs ont été évalués en fonction de leur influence sur l’étendue du comportement académique malhonnête des étudiants. Plus de la moitié des étudiants échantillonnés ont adopté au moins l’un des trois types de comportements malhonnêtes au cours de leur passage à l’université. La faculté à s’inscrire, les stratégies d’apprentissage, la perception quant au comportement tricheur des pairs et quant à leurs demandes d’aide, et les perceptions et évaluations de la malhonnêteté académique constituent des indices uniques pour ce qui est de prédire le comportement académique malhonnête. Un degré élevé d’auto-efficacité, de même que certains motifs essentiels, avaient un effet protecteur dans la réduction de la propension des étudiants à s’engager dans des comportements académiques malhonnêtes. L’article aborde brièvement les conséquences de ces résultats au cours d’interventions en institution d’enseignement.
At Dalhousie we must accept responsibility for creating the conditions for everyone to flourish and to belong.
A culture of belonging requires ongoing commitment to greater inclusivity with focus on creating a welcoming home for Dalhousie’s diverse faculty, staff, students, and alumni alongside the broader community.
Ontario’s universities know how important it is not only to train and equip students for career and life success, but also to reach beyond the walls of campus and lift up communities. Through partnerships that spark service learning, or community-based opportunities that enrich the learning experience and also improve lives, many thousands of students, faculty and staff are actively engaging with the 33 communities where Ontario universities are rooted. Some start their own initiatives, creating
non-profit organizations, outreach programs, or inventing innovative products that solve critical issues around the globe. Students have won hundreds of awards for their work, and often find or create jobs out of these experiences.
With a population of 13 million people, the province of Ontario covers a significant geographic distribution of 917,741 square kilometres (Statistics Canada, 2005). Fourteen per cent of the population is categorized as living in a rural, remote or northern area (Statistics Canada, 2011). Within this land mass is a rich diversity of people, systems and institutions that are privileged to call it home - including Francophone persons and First Nations, Inuit and Métis people. There are unique challenges that exist within these communities that affect access to health services: geographic distance, socioeconomic status, availability of health human resources and infrastructure. These factors have an impact on health status, wellness and the ability to
offer person-centred health care.
Over the next several years, more than 500 Aboriginal communities across Canada will find themselves living right in the heart of some of the biggest oil, gas, forestry and mining projects Canada has seen in decades. Debates over pipelines, accelerated foreign investment, and the push for a national energy strategy have turned a spotlight on the central role that Aboriginal communities can play in resource development.
The present system of academic credentials awarded by Ontario’s colleges was established nearly a half century ago. It is thus appropriate to consider how well some of those credential titles fit in the global lexicon of academic credentials as it has evolved over the last half century and whether they are still appropriate today.
Presently the term for the credential that is awarded by colleges in Ontario upon completion of a program of two years’ duration is diploma. In 1995, noted community college scholar John Dennison of the University of British Columbia observed that “there is not a clear appreciation of what a diploma means”, and this “results in an undervaluation of the diploma from a CAAT” (Dennison, 1995, p. 13).
This paper examines the rise in student loan delinquency and default drawing on a unique set of administrative data on federal student borrowing, matched to earnings records from de-identified tax records. Most of the increase in default is associated with the rise in the number of borrowers at for-profit schools and, to a lesser extent, 2-year institutions and certain other non-selective institutions, whose students historically composed only a small share of borrowers. These non-traditional borrowers were drawn from lower income families, attended institutions with relatively weak educational outcomes, and experienced poor labor market outcomes after leaving school. In contrast, default rates among borrowers attending most 4-year public and non-profit private institutions and graduate borrowers—borrowers who represent the vast majority of the federal loan portfolio—have remained low, despite the severe recession and their relatively high loan balances. Their higher earnings, low rates of unemployment, and greater family resources appear to have enabled them to avoid adverse loan outcomes even during times of hardship. Decomposition analysis indicates that changes in characteristics of borrowers and the institutions they attended are associated with much of the doubling in default rates between 2000 and 2011. Changes in the type of schools attended, debt burdens, and labor market outcomes of non-traditional borrowers at for-profit and 2-year colleges explain the
largest share.