Students persisting to completion of their educational goals is a key gauge of student success, and therefore institutional success. Two most frequently cited statistics in connection with student success are the freshman-to-sophomore retention rate, or first-year annual return rate, and the cohort graduation rate. The freshman-to-sophomore retention rate measures the
percentage of first-time, full-time students enrolled at the university the following fall semester. The cohort graduation rate is defined as the percentage of an entering class that graduates within three years with an associate’s degree, and within four, five, or six years with a baccalaureate degree. Since the annual return rate of students as they progress through a program
is directly related to their degree/certificate completion, the concept of retention usually includes year-by-year retention or persistence rates as well as graduation rates. Together, these statistics represent student success.
The condition of the U.S. science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) workforce figures prominently in discussions of national competitiveness, education policy, innovation, and even immigration. But the relevant analyses and conversations are hindered by differing understandings of the composition and character of the STEM workforce and the varied, dynamic career pathways enabled by STEM knowledge and skills.
Interest in adult college completion, both for adults with some college credit and those who have never before attended college, has dramatically increased across the higher education community. This report draws from the considerable body of recent research focused on various populations of adult learners, including data gathered during Higher Ed Insight's recent evaluation of Lumina Foundation's adult college completion efforts. The goal of the report is to synthesize what has been learned about the needs of adult college students, particularly those returning to college after stopping out, as well as to identify areas where further inquiry is needed in order to demonstrate effective ways to support degree completion for adults.
Background/Context: Very little empirical research has been conducted on the issue of educator sexual misconduct (ESM) in secondary settings. The few reports available typically treat a larger social issue, such as sexual harassment or child abuse; therefore, data on ESM specifically must be extrapolated. When such data are obtained, the focus has been on rates of incidence rather than the nature of the problem. Feminist scholars have theorized embodiment in education and debated whether and to what extent an eroticized pedagogy is desirable, but scant attention has been paid to how and why erotic pedagogy can go awry.
Grade Change - Tracking Online Education in the United State is the eleventh annual report on the state of online learning in U.S. higher education. The survey is designed, administered and analyzed by the Babson Survey Research Group, with data collection conducted in partnership with the College Board. Using responses from more than 2,800 colleges and
universities, this study is aimed at answering fundamental questions about the nature and extent of online education.
Background/Context: The rapid pace of technological change, undergirded by near ubiquitous access to the web, is producing a new learning ecology—a new ecology of information, of knowledge, of reading, of teaching, and of thinking. This instant availability of digital resources frees both time and cognitive energy that may be used to facilitate higher order thinking. This article provides a framework through which to better understand, evaluate, and scaffold the generative synthesis of knowledge in a web-mediated world.
Purpose/Objective: The purpose of this article is to describe a theory that can stimulate additional scholarly work examining higher order, or generative, thinking in web-mediated environments.
There has been substantial discussion, research, and debate about the role of academic freedom within higher education, primarily centered on the university model. Not as well documented or understood is the issue of academic freedom within colleges and institutes in Canada. In this paper, we exam- ine the current state of academic freedom in colleges and institutes using a historical analysis of two Canadian provinces, British Columbia and Ontario. Beginning with an overview of academic freedom within universities, we then examine the development and evolution of colleges and institutes and discuss how or if academic freedom applies to them. We consider issues of collegial- ity, faculty engagement, and governance as they impact the concept and practice of academic freedom within these institutions. We also discuss the different origins, intents, roles, and governance models of universities in contrast to colleges and institutes, which are generally representative of the broader Canadian higher education landscape.
Human capital is key for economic growth. Not only is it linked to aggregate economic performance but also to each individual’s labour market outcomes. However, a skilled population is not enough to achieve high and inclusive growth, as skills need to be put into productive use at work. Thanks to the availability of measures of both the proficiency and the use of numerous types of skills, the Survey of Adult Skills offers a unique opportunity to advance knowledge in this area and this paper presents and discusses evidence on both these dimensions with a particular focus on their implications for labour market policy. This paper explores the role played in the labour market by skill proficiency in the areas of literacy, numeracy and problem solving in technology-rich environments. It also shows how skills use, not only proficiency, affects a number
of key labour market phenomena, such as the gender wage gap. Finally, the paper combines information on skill proficiency, educational attainment, skill use and qualification requirements to construct indicators of qualification and skills mismatch and to explore their causes and consequences.
St. Clair College is determined to establish itself as a "Destination College". By offering more degree programs, extending its scope of articulation agreements with universities and colleges within the province, nationally and internationally, and by establishing entrepreneurship, research, and innovation partnerships, the College will broaden the ability of our students to
acquire knowledge and leading-edge skills that will allow them to be an important resource in a globally competitive marketplace, with unique program offerings, state-of-the-art facilities, and an operating philosophy founded on accessibility, quality teaching, learning method options, and sustainability.
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).
Canadians are making sacrifices to prepare themselves for a changing workforce. Federal and provincial government
decisions are forcing students to take on more education related debt than any previous generation, while middle class
earnings have largely stagnated in the past twenty years.
Skyrocketing tuition fees and the prevalence of loan-based financial assistance have pushed student debt to historic
levels. This past year, almost 425,000 students were forced to borrow in order to finance their education. The aggregate of
loans disbursed by the Canada Student Loans Program, less the aggregate of loan repayments received is resulting in student
debt increasing by $1 million per day.
Public colleges are the only academic institutions in Canada that deliver a robust range of career-focused programs and training to all segments of the population.
The colleges’ labour-market programs, such as Second Career, employment counselling, academic upgrading and apprenticeship training serve more than 160,000 students each year.
Ontario’s public college programs are affordable and reach students in all socioeconomic groups – from people who need upgrading in order to qualify for full-time college programs, to university graduates seeking marketable skills.
Graduates of Ontario’s 24 public colleges earn credentials that have met the province’s rigorous standards for post-secondary education and are valued by employers.
College graduates continue to be in high demand.
Vision
•Transforming lives and communities through learning.
Mission
•To educate students for career success.
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?
Is it just that time of the semester, or are academics more and more stressed out? In the past week alone, I’ve talked with:
-A colleague emotionally reeling from counseling two students who each had a parent die this semester.
-Another unsettled colleague who received an expletive-filled email from an angry student demanding to "speak to your supervisor."
-A friend at another institution buried under a mountain of papers — the product of a fourth course that he’s teaching on overload to make a little extra money.
Immigrant families come to Canada with high education levels, with the Greater Toronto Area a primary destination. Despite high education levels, their economic and social integration into Canada is often difficult, due in part to lack of recognition of foreign credentials and work experience, weak official-language skills, and insufficient cultural competencies. For the children in these families, the young immigrants, successful education outcomes set the stage for success in adulthood, both in the workplace and in further education, enabling them to better integrate into Canadian society and contribute to the Canadian economy. This study examined the pathways of immigrant youth, and the role of English-language proficiency and region of origin in these pathways, using a recently created database containing a number of linked data sources from Seneca College, a large multicultural college in Toronto. This longitudinal dataset enables us to track individual students from the beginning of high school through to graduation from college, and their eventual transition into the labour market or to further education.
Welcome to the workshop. Our goal is to provide an update of the ideas from some of the key work that we are engaged in in partnership with schools and school systems around the world. We base our work on three fundamental assumptions:
1. The Moral Imperative Realized (raise the bar and close the gap for all students on deep learning goals);
2. Whole System Involvement (100% of schools and jurisdictions are engaged);
3. Precision and Practicality (clear strategies that become jointly owned).
Educational Consulting Services (ECS) has supported every college in Ontario in the planning of their campuses and buildings. The focus of this work has been the reconciliation of the colleges’ education and training missions with their infrastructure.
As campus and space planners, ECS has assisted in enhanced space management, transformation of facilities, and improved utilization.
This report is a compendium of observations and a high level commentary on the question of capital funding. It was prepared at the request of ACAATO and draws on ECS’s experience in Ontario and other jurisdictions. The report also draws on
information provided by college administrators for this study.
Today, the colleges’ sustainability is compromised. Reliance on efficiency as a means of overcoming budget shortfalls is an exhausted strategy. The expectation that colleges can still be more efficient has, in fact, become a liability.
Audience response systems (ARS) are electronic applications in which a receiver captures information entered by students via keypads or hand-held devices. Students’ responses can be displayed instantly, usually in the form of a histogram. Professors typically use ARS to increase student interaction and for formative assessment (to measure students’ understanding of material during a lecture; Micheletto, 2011). In some cases, audience response systems have also been used to pose
real research questions and follow an interactive sampling approach (not to be confused with experiment data collection). For example, imagine that a research study concluded that females respond more quickly to red stimuli than do males. An interactive sampling session in the classroom would present students with coloured stimuli, and the instructor would ask students to respond, as quickly as possible and using the ARS, when they see the red stimuli. The instructor would then
display the students’ responses and compare the students’ data to results from the published research study. Barnett & Kriesel (2003) propose three criteria that classroom interactive sampling should meet if it is to stimulate discussion among students:
1. Interactive sampling should be conducted to demonstrate class concepts.
2. Students should be providing responses in a controlled setting.
3. Students’ responses should be compared to behavioural hypotheses derived from theory.
This chapter presents an overview of Aboriginal education in Canada that focuses on linking the transgenerational effects of colonialism with current issues. Educational models, partnerships, and programs already exist that make an enormous
impact on outcomes for children and youth in and from Aboriginal communities.
Examples of six successful programs that were developed in partnership with Aboriginal communities and range from elementary school through post-secondary school are highlighted.