The 2015 Engineers Canada Labour Market Study provides supply and demand projections for 14 engineering occupations. The report highlights a large and growing need to replace retiring engineers as they exit the workforce. This is particularly relevant for civil, mechanical, electrical and electronic engineers as well as computer engineers. Replacement demand for engineers
is an important theme that will be relevant for the next decade as the baby boom generation retires.
Canadian universities are granting an increasing number of engineering degrees to Canadian and international students and creating new entrants to these occupations. Ontario and Quebec universities are granting many of these degrees. However, economic activity is shifting to western Canada and shifting the demand for engineers in that direction. Engineers Canada would like to highlight the growing importance of inter-provincial migration for engineers. In addition, federal government immigration policy such as the new Express Entry program is important to help streamline international migration of engineers to meet the country’s future workforce requirements.
The time for meaningful transformation in Ontario’s postsecondary system is now. To meet the needs of the emerging economy, reform must focus on innovation and applied learning that vaults our province ahead of its competition in creating the best-educated, best-prepared workforce in the world. Composed of distinct but equally valued and complementary partners, Ontario’s transformed postsecondary system will ensure that all students can reach their full potential through a broad array of theoretical and applied learning opportunities. Colleges will continue to be student focused, specializing in applied learning that leads to good jobs for graduates, addresses labour market needs and affords access to the broadest possible population. Colleges and universities will offer a range of credentials within their systems and collaborate on a multitude of programs that offer students the best of both. Expanded pathways will give students the opportunity to customize their post-secondary experience to match their interests. Online and blended learning, married to leading-edge technology, will enable students to learn anywhere, anytime, and in ways best suited to their learning styles. Students will be better prepared than ever before to meet the demands of the economy, and they will achieve their goals faster and at less cost.
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.
Students from a number of groups remain underrepresented in Ontario’s universities and colleges, including low-income students, Aboriginal students, first generation students whose parents did not attend a post-secondary institution, rural and northern students, and students with dependants. Improving access to higher education for these and other underrepresented groups is widely acknowledged as essential to building a more equitable society and to competing in the increasingly knowledgebased economy. Indeed, Premier McGuinty has stated his desire to see 70 per cent of Ontarians complete post-secondary education, and achieving this target will require a concerted effort to reduce participation gaps.
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?
The National Student Financial Wellness Study (NSFWS) is a national survey of college students examining the financial attitudes, practices and knowledge of students from institutions of higher education across the United States, and was developed and administered by The Ohio State University. The purpose of the 2014 NSFW is to gain a more thorough and accurate
picture of the financial wellness of college students.
Students are more likely to strive for and achieve success when they believe that their personal effort matters—when they think they can exert significant influence or control over the outcomes of their life and their future success (Bandura, 1997; Chemers, Hu, & Garcia, 2001; Csikszentmihalyi, 1990; Elias, & Loomis, 2002; Multon, Brown, & Lent, 1991; Solberg, et al.,
1993).
Joe Cuseo
Professor Emeritus, Psychology; Educational Consultant, AVID
([email protected])
Despite Canada having one of the world’s best-educated populations, numerous rationales have been presented to support the continued expansion and broadening of participation in post-secondary education (PSE). Not only do recent federal and provincial occupational projections suggest that future jobs will overwhelmingly require candidates with some form of PSE, the evidence on earnings premiums and private rates of return to PSE provide some indications that the labour market can still absorb large quantities of PSE graduates. Provinces have made higher PSE attainment a priority — for example, in the most recent Ontario budget, the government set as one of its goals to increase the PSE attainment rate from 62 per cent to
70 per cent (Ontario Ministry of Finance, 2010).
Yet, demographic trends suggest that maintaining, let alone increasing, the number of postsecondary graduates in coming years will prove challenging. Though there are currently supplyside constraints in some regions (principally urban Ontario), within 20 years, the pool of postsecondary- aged Canadians will be substantially shallower than it is today. To keep the supply of skilled workers at current levels, participation rates will have to keep climbing. As participation rates are already quite high among economically advantaged segments of the population, there is growing consensus that the best opportunity for growth in participation rates may be among groups that are currently under-represented in PSE, such as students from low-income families, students with no history of post-secondary education in their families and Aboriginal students. A strong case can be made as well that governments and PSE institutions should strive to close the gap in participation rates between under-represented groups and the rest of the population on the grounds that all Canadians should be provided with the same chances and opportunities to engage in PSE studies, independently of their socio-economic background. In short, increasing the participation rates of disadvantaged populations is an objective worth pursuing from both an efficiency and equity perspective.
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.
Trends in post-secondary education participation in Canada continue to show that Aboriginal1 people rely significantly on
Canada’s publicly-funded colleges, institutes, polytechnics, cégeps, and universities with a college mandate (hereinafter
referred to as “colleges”). ACCC is the national voluntary membership association which serves Canada’s publicly-funded
colleges and informs and advises various levels of government, business, industry and labour. Aboriginal peoples’ access
to post-secondary education, inclusion and community development has been one of the Association’s strategic priorities
since its creation in 1972.
A few years ago my teaching life had reached what felt like a dead end. Daily, I would see newspaper announcements about the retirement of public school educators who had the same number of years of experience as I had. Subsequently, I found myself longing to be in those photographs or articles. A significant challenge existed in that I was not old enough to touch my retirement funds plus I lacked another viable source of income—a major financial dilemma. At the time it seemed that I was going through the motions of my teaching job, and I had definitely lost a sense of joy.
Every year, schizophrenia disrupts the lives of hundreds of thousands of Canadians. While affecting only approximately
1% of the population, this complex, multifaceted illness places a disproportionate strain on patients, families,
clinicians and other care providers. Symptoms, which vary in severity and expression, can make it incredibly
difficult for patients to sustain relationships, engage in social networks or carry out routine tasks. Moreover, these
social burdens extend well beyond the affected patient. Families and health professionals who provide care often
find their lives interrupted and negatively impacted by the illness. Ineffective policy, poorly organized care systems and
expensive medications all contribute to placing the burden directly on families. The result is higher emotional costs and
lower standards of life among care providers.
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.
2017 was a year of big stories for Canadian higher ed, from historically-long strikes to bitter debates over the meaning of academic freedom. We’ve combed through the 2,620 stories we ran this year in our daily Academica Top Ten and Indigenous Top Ten, analyzing our readership statistics to see which stories and themes received the most attention from our readers. We then combined this data with the insights of our crack team of researchers to whittle our list down to the top ten stories of 2017.
SUMMARY
This paper analyses business-driven innovation in education by looking at education-related patents. It first draws a picture of the challenges for innovation in the formal education sector, which suffers from a poor knowledge ecology: science is hardly linked to core teaching and administrative practices. It then turns to a common indicator of innovation: patents. In the case of education, patents typically cover educational tools. An analysis of education-related patents over the past 20 years shows a clear rise in the production of highly innovative educational technologies by businesses, typically building on advances in information and communication technology. While this increase in educational innovations may present new opportunities for the formal education sector, the emerging tool industry currently targets the nonformal education rather than the formal education system. We shortly discuss why business entrepreneurs may be less interested in the market of formal education.
RÉSUMÉ
Cet article porte sur l’innovation entrepreneuriale dans le secteur de l’éducation, à partir d’une analyse des dépôts de brevets dans le secteur éducatif. Premièrement, il propose un tableau des défis de l’innovation dans le secteur de l’éducation formelle, dont l’écologie du savoir est faible : la science y est peu liée avec le cœur des pratiques pédagogiques et administratives. L’étude porte ensuite sur un indicateur courant de l’innovation : les brevets. Dans le cas de l’éducation, les brevets couvrent généralement des « outils » éducatifs. L’analyse des brevets éducatifs durant les vingt dernières années montre une claire croissance de la production de technologies éducatives hautement innovantes par des entreprises privées, qui s’appuient souvent sur les progrès des technologies d’information et de communication. Bien que cette croissance des innovations éducatives puisse donner de nouvelles opportunités au secteur formel de l’éducation, l’industrie émergente d’outils éducatifs cible actuellement les secteurs informels d’éducation. Nous discutons brièvement les raisons pour lesquelles les entrepreneurs privés semblent moins intéressés par le secteur de l’éducation formelle.
There are two major forces driving education today. The first is the economic reality that forces schools to
make the most effective use of dollars to improve student outcomes. The second is the exponential growth in digital tools — and subsequently digital content — that provides the foundation to transform and improve how instructors teach and how students learn. Let's address the economic driver first. For far too long the education sector has lagged behind the private
sector in adopting efficiencies and capabilities derived from technology. Virtually every other sector in the economy has been computerized, modularized and transformed over the past 30 years. Although there have been leaders for change, as witnessed by the efforts we applaud in this Yearbook, change has been difficult and delayed. The recent recession has only forced this issue to the forefront.
The second driver is technological. Digital content, more sophisticated assessment tools and myriad personal and mobile computing devices are emerging and taking center stage — all aimed at improving student achievement and preparing students to thrive in the careers of a digital economy. These emerging technologies, led by a cadre of educational technologists, are leading us down the right path. This Yearbook aims to help the education community continue on the right path. The first part of the Yearbook takes a look at IT spend, funding opportunities and top trends of the 2010-2011 school year to shed some light on what technologies are top of mind and how to fund them. The second part highlights 50 education innovators that have led the way and provided best-practice models to imitate. This look at what was done, who is doing it and where we are going is intended to provide inspiration and guidance to education leaders on their own innovative quests in education.
Project Background
In 2008, the Higher Education Quality Council of Ontario (HEQCO) issued an open Request for Proposals (RFP) to Ontario colleges and universities that would allow them to evaluate interventions that already existed at those institutions and that were designed to promote student success in various ways. Brock University was involved in a total of four research projects that were approved for funding at that time, including this project. This research project also has the distinction of being the only one in the RFP which involved a re-examination of institutional financial aid policies.
Project Purpose
Institutional financial aid applications ask a wide range of questions dealing with both the personal and financial history of the student and his/her family. This process can take a significant amount of the student’s time, and may even intimidate some. Moreover, the level of financial detail required in the application may be a deterrent to students who might be either embarrassed to disclose family details, or uncomfortable asking their parents about the financial situation of their family.
It is believed that the complex and potentially discouraging application process that exists at many postsecondary institutions (and many government financial aid programs) can be simplified by including fewer fields in the application for funding. This would benefit both student applicants and institutional administrators, and could likely be done without significantly altering
the output that would have been generated using the original full application.
The purpose of this project is to compare two approaches to calculating student financial assessed need for the purposes of determining eligibility for the Brock University Entering Student Bursary. The research question being addressed in this project is whether a simplified approach to calculating assessed need would lead to similar outcomes in terms of identifying
eligibility for the Entering Student Bursary as the original application process that had been in place for years at Brock University.
BY UNDERSTANDING HOW THE BRAIN WORKS, educators are better equipped to help students with everything from focusing attention to increasing retention. That’s the promise of brain-based learning, which draws insights from neurology, psychology, technology, and other fields. Bringing this information to the classroom can help teachers engage diverse learners, offer effective feedback that leads to deeper understanding, and create a rich learning environment that attends to students’ social and emotional needs along with their developing brains.
Chances are, you already know more about brain-based learning than you think you do. When you introduce topics to your students, do you begin by activating prior knowledge? That helps learners build on what they already know, strengthening connections in the brain. Do you use tools like graphic organizers, songs, or rhymes? These strategies help students represent their thinking visually, kinesthetically, and phonetically. These techniques all deserve a place in your tool kit because they get the brain primed for learning.
Students from a number of groups remain underrepresented in Ontario’s universities and colleges, including low-income students, Aboriginal students, first generation students whose parents did not attend a post-secondary institution, rural and northern students, and students with dependants. Improving access to higher education for these and other underrepresented groups is widely acknowledged as essential to building a more equitable society and to competing in the increasingly knowledge-based economy. Indeed, Premier McGuinty has stated his desire to see 70 per cent of Ontarians complete post-secondary education, and achieving this target will require a concerted effort to reduce participation gaps.
The role of academic deans is critical to the success of higher education academic institutions. This study
illustrates the leadership approach of Ohio’s academic deans. This quantitative study researched and analyzed
whether differences exists between the leadership styles of academic deans and the independent variables of age,
number of faculty supervised, and the number of years of experience.. Blake and Mouton’s Managerial Grid was utilized for this study. Blake and Mouton theory is based on five predominate leadership styles: Data for this study was gathered using a researcher designed instrument along with the Styles of Leadership Survey to gather information about the academic deans. The surveys were administered through U.S. mail to the deans’ office
address. ANOVA methodology was used to analyze the data. It appears from the results of this study that no
significant independent differences exist among the leadership styles and the independent variables.
Keywords: Leadership, Academic Deans, Managerial Grid, Chief Academic officer, University