Post-secondary education is the great equalizer. It gives us all a chance to reach higher no matter where we come from or whatever our background. Both of my parents came from very modest upbringings and saw a university degree as a ticket to a good job and an entry to Ontario’s middle class. They, in turn, placed a high importance on post-secondary education and encouraged my sister and I to follow in their footsteps.
There is a lot about Ontario’s colleges and universities that we can be proud of, but we need to ensure our
students are getting the best value for their tuition. In Ontario today, we see far too many students graduate
with degrees and deep debts who can’t find a job.
We are spending a lot more money as a province, but we aren’t seeing the results. Government funding has increased by 84% since 2003, yet Ontario universities are slipping in international rankings, tuition keeps rising, new graduates keep heading out West and there are many jobs in the skilled trades that can’t be filled. This has got to change. We need to make the necessary changes to ensure our schools are the best in the world at preparing students for a career. The key will be incenting excellence, harnessing market forces, encouraging specialization and being honest. We cannot ignore the fact that increasingly university students end up in colleges, after accumulating significant student debt. We need a culture shift in our sytem. Promoting a ‘College First’ approach in our high schools will recognize the hundreds of thousands of jobs in the skilled trades and applied learning at risk of going unfilled and will help alleviate pressure on our universities while preparing those students who decide to
continue on to pursue a university degree.
We also cannot ignore the fact that our university rankings on the global stage have been slipping for some time. Our universities should be focused on quality, not quantity. Allowing undergraduate instructors to focus on teaching full time will improve the student experience by incenting excellence in teaching. Let us make no mistake about the promise we can offer our young graduates and the taxpayers who fund the system. A purposeful evolution of post-secondary education has the potential to do more for the long term health of Ontario than any other program or policy imaginable.
Progressive Conservatives Ontario
This paper deals with the problematic nature of the transition between education and the workplace. A smooth transition between education and the workplace requires learners to develop an integrated knowledge base, but this is problematic as most educational programmes offer knowledge and experiences in a fragmented manner, scattered over a variety of subjects, modules and (work) experiences. To overcome this problem, we propose a design approach and shifting the educational focus of attention from individual learners to learning environments. The broader notion of learning environments facilitates transitions by establishing horizontal connections between schools and the workplace. The main argument of this paper is that combining or connecting aspects of school-based settings only is not sufficient to ensure learners will develop an integrated knowledge base. The concept and examples of “hybrid learning environment” show how formal, school-based learning and workplace experiences can be closely connected. The paper offers a framework of four coherent perspectives that can help to understand the complex nature of such environments and to design hybrid learning environments: the “agency perspective”, the “spatial perspective”, the “temporal perspective”, and the “instrumental perspective”. The framework is applied to three cases taken from vocational education in the Netherlands to describe what hybrid learning environments look like in contemporary educational practice.
During the spring and summer of 2013, 41 Canadian universities conducted a survey of their baccalaureate graduates six or seven years following graduation (i.e. 2006 and 2007 graduates). Over 21,000 graduates provided information about their current employment situation, educational activity following their bachelor's program and their current social and civic involvement; and they assessed various elements of their academic program and university experience overall and the impacts these have in their lives today.
June 2014
The Canadian University Baccalaureate Graduate Outcomes Project
This report is the first in a series that will report the key findings of the survey. Future reports will cover other survey topics, including the relationship between current occupation and academic program, educational activity following baccalaureate graduation, graduates' assessments of the strengths,weaknesses and impacts of their academic program, and discipline-specific analyses (e.g. for the STEM disciplines, Humanities and Liberal Arts, etc.).
Educators tasked with finding instructional materials for their districts and classrooms face a dizzying array of options these days. Classroom resources are available in print, digital textbook formats, and online. They can be paid for, subscribed to, or downloaded for free. They’re available as comprehensive, yearlong curricula; individual thematic units; and single activities and games.
Several forces have collided to bring the market to this confusing, yet ultimately academically promising point: The majority of states are now using the Common Core State Standards, meaning there are more opportunities to share materials across state lines. States are increasingly letting districts choose their own instructional materials, rather than forcing them to select from an approved list. There’s been a recent push, including from the federal government, to make online instructional materials free and open to the public—known as open educational resources
This report is a summary of research undertaken for Gabriel Dumont Institute Training and Employment, a branch of the Gabriel Dumont Institute, about the Gabriel Dumont Institute’s Aboriginal Apprenticeship Initiative. The initiative was administered by Gabriel Dumont Institute Training and Employment.
The report is divided into five sections. The next section (Section 2) provides a general overview of the labour market in Saskatchewan with particular emphasis on Aboriginal people and the skilled trades. Included in that section is a short-term outlook for employment in the apprenticeable trades. Section 3 describes the Saskatchewan apprenticeship system including statistics about the total number of apprentices and the number of Aboriginal apprentices in Saskatchewan.
Canada’s universities are committed to working with all parliamentarians to build a more prosperous,
innovative and competitive nation. We do this through research that drives economic growth and addresses pressing social problems, and education that provides students with the advanced skills needed to thrive in a dynamic, global job market.
Budget 2014 included important investments in research and innovation, as well as support for internships. The Finance Committee is to be commended for its role in promoting them.
The university community’s recommendations for Budget 2015 focus in three areas: enhanced funding for research and innovation; an opportunities strategy for young Canadians; and initiatives to attract more Aboriginal Canadians to postsecondary education. Together, these recommendations contribute to three themes outlined in the Committee’s request for submissions
If you’re interested in using technology tools to enhance your teaching, it’s easy to get overwhelmed by the mountain of information out there. To make matters worse, much of it is either highly technical or simply not very practical for the college classroom.
Teaching with Technology: Tools and Strategies to Improve Student Learning approaches teaching technologies from your perspective — discussing what works, what doesn’t, and how to implement the best ideas in the best ways. These articles were written by John Orlando, PhD, program director at Norwich University, as part of the Teaching with Technology column on Faculty Focus. You’ll find the articles are loaded with practical information as well as links to valuable resources. Articles in the report include:
• Using VoiceThread to Build Student Engagement
• Wikipedia in the Classroom: Tips for Effective Use
• Blogging to Improve Student Learning: Tips and Tools for Getting Started
• Prezi: A Better Way of Doing Presentations
• Using Polling and Smartphones to Keep Students Engaged
Whether the courses you teach are face-to-face, online, blended, or all of the above, this report explains effective ways to incorporate technology into your courses to create a rich learning experience for students, and a rewarding teaching experience for you.
Ontario faces significant challenges to its global competitiveness. At the same time, demographic trends point to growing skills shortages and to increased competition worldwide for skilled labour. In the face of these challenges, there is an urgent need to ensure the economy has the skills it needs and individuals have access to recognized, credentialed education and training that meets their individual aspirations and supports their transition to long-term employment. The proposals contained in this document also address a key priority of the McGuinty government: addressing poverty. For example, with youth unemployment at nearly 14 per cent, Ontario must ensure that at-risk youth, who have even higher unemployment rates, participate in education and training programs such as the Ontario Youth Apprenticeship Program, Job Connect and Learning to 18.
There is a need to refocus our employment and training programs and services to respond to identified labour market needs and support long-term labour force attachment.
Ontario’s colleges have a mandate to offer a comprehensive program of career-oriented postsecondary education and training to assist individuals in finding and keeping employment, to meet the needs of employers and the changing work environment, and to support the economic and social development of their local and diverse communities. We represent a significant public investment.
A government-college partnership that capitalizes on the colleges’ mandate and the public investment in colleges represents a prudent approach to meeting the labour market challenges Ontario faces.
The programs and services that individual colleges deliver at the local level vary depending on local needs and circumstances. Within this context, Ontario’s colleges are committed to playing a pivotal role in assisting the province. We represent a stable, accountable, province-wide, publicly funded infrastructure that delivers a comprehensive range of programming in English and in French and provides essential support services to individuals to enhance their potential
for success.
College-Level Literacy: An Inventory of Current Practices at Ontario's Colleges instrument for gathering and reporting information. Three categories of college size, based on the Fall 2009 intake of students into postsecondary programs, provided further insight into the distribution of various practices. All 24 Ontario colleges participated in this study.
The path to economic mobility increasingly runs through postsecondary education. Although the combination of rising tuition prices and the difficult labor market have raised questions about the value of education after high school, degree and
certificate holders are still better off than those with just a high school diploma.
The term “microaggression” was coined in 1970 to name relatively slight, subtle, and often unintentional offenses that cause harm (Pierce, 1970). Since then, a substantial body of research on microaggressions has demonstrated their prevalence and harmful effects (Boysen, 2012; Solorzan, et. al., 2010; Suárez-Orozco, et. al., 2015; Sue, 2010).
The Sexual Assault Prevention and Response Working Group (SAPRWG) was established in the summer of 2013, as one of several interrelated working groups reporting through the Health and Wellness Steering Committee, to advance a more strategic approach to addressing sexual assault prevent and response at Queen‘s. The Working Group was focused on student experiences of
sexual assault on campus.
The conventional pathway model in postsecondary education (PSE) has traditionally been one of simple, linear choices, where enrolment after secondary school in either college or university ultimately leads to the attainment of a credential and entry into the labour force. Today, however, PSE pathways are no longer as direct. Fewer students are entering PSE programs directly from high school (Bayard and Greenlee, 2009: 11) and students are more likely to have previous PSE experience or to attain multiple credentials than students in the past (Boothby and Drewes, 2006: 6; Bayard and Greenlee, 2009: 11; Colleges Ontario (CO), 2009). Students are opting to alternate between part- and full-time studies, switch programs, return to PSE after an
absence or time in the workforce, pursue further credentials, or transfer between postsecondary institutions and even sectors.
Vision
The post-secondary destination of choice for internationally acclaimed, career-focused education
that is essential to an inclusive, prosperous and globally competitive Ontario.
Mission
Colleges will lead educational innovations and advance public policy reforms to build the
advanced workforce required to support new economic investments, rewarding careers and strong
communities throughout Ontario.
COLLEGES ONTARIO
Fuelling Prosperity: Colleges Ontario’s strategic plan 2015-18
Our Values
■ Student success: We promote inclusive college programs and services that will enable all
qualified students to graduate to meaningful careers.
■ Learning and teaching excellence: We drive an innovative learning environment that focuses on
best practices and delivers the high-quality, relevant education required by students and the
labour market.
■ Responsiveness: We are responsive to our communities and to the needs of the labour market.
■ Collaboration: We act as one voice on critical issues in higher education while recognizing and
respecting each other’s unique differences.
■ Strong stewardship: We are committed to excellent stewardship of public resources.
Abstract Although the literature on institutional diversity suggests that quality assurance practices could affect institutional diversity, there has been little empirical research on this relationship. This article seeks to shed some light on the possible connection between quality assurance practices and institutional diversity by examining the arrangements for
quality assurance in higher education systems that include two distinct sectors, one of which having a more academic orientation and the other a more applied orientation. The article explores the ways in which quality assurance structures and standards in selected jurisdictions provide for recognition of the differences in orientation and mission between academic and applied sectors of higher education systems. The research identified some features of quality assurance systems that recognize the characteristics of applied higher education, such as having different statements of expected learning outcomes for applied
and academic programs or requiring different qualifications for faculty who teach in applied programs. It is hoped that the results might be of interest to policy makers and quality assurance practitioners who are concerned about the possible impact of quality
assurance on institutional diversity.
In this chapter, Kelly Foley and David Green challenge the conventional wisdom that increasing the level of education is the perfect antidote to rising income inequality. They investigate two key questions. First, how has rising educational attainment shaped the structure of wages and earnings in Canada over time? Second, what role has education and more broadly “human capital” policy played in either exacerbating or reducing inequality?
The authors warn against relying on human capital policy — at least in its current form — as a stabilizer for inequality. They find that changes in the returns to education and the educational composition of the workforce fail to explain the increases in earnings inequality observed in recent decades. The forces driving changes in the Canadian wage structure will not be offset by
simply increasing the education level of the workforce, they argue. In particular, directing more resources toward university education would benefit children from middle- and upper-income households the most and could in fact increase inequality. Increasing spending on college and apprenticeship programs appears to be no better as a solution, unless core issues such as low female participation and the low completion rates of participants are effectively addressed. In contrast, targeting expenditures on early childhood development and secondary school toward low-income households has greater potential to reduce inequality both in the long term and across generations. But even in these cases, the ultimate impact on wage differences between middle- and high-earners is unclear. Education and training policy is not a silver bullet for solving inequality.
Robert R. Blake and Anne Adams McCanse1 refined the Leadership Grid® which identified various types of man- agerial leadership based on concern for production cou- pled with concern for people. While they consider the “team management” style of leadership to be ideal, they recognize that it may be difficult to implement in some work situations. Effective managers have great concern for both people and production. They work to motivate employees to reach their highest levels of accomplish- ment. They are flexible and responsive to change, and they understand the need to change.
The importance of positive youth development cannot be overstated. We strive to foster healthy mental/emotional, social, spiritual and physical development in our children. Alarmingly high Aboriginal youth suicide rates in some areas call for
an increased understanding of how protective factors and risk-taking behaviours influence youth development. This may help us develop strategies to increase positive outcomes for Aboriginal youth. This paper will provide an overview of the impact of loss of cultural continuity and identity on positive youth development.
This paper examines the long-term labour market premiums associated with completing a college certificate and a bachelor's degree, compared to completing a high school diploma. Several labour market outcomes of individuals are examined with longitudinal data over a 20- year period spanning their mid-30s to their mid-50s. The findings show that individuals who have a bachelor's degree or a college certificate have more favourable labour market outcomes over their working lives than individuals who have only a high school diploma. More specifically, the earnings premium associated with a bachelor's degree over the 20-year period ranges, on average, from $728,000 for men to $442,000 for women. For a college certificate, the premium is $248,000 for men and $180,000 for women, on average. The earnings premium associated with a bachelor's degree is much larger at the top of the distribution for men than it is for women. The study also finds that, for both men and women, a bachelor's degree and a college certificate are associated with more years of coverage in an employer-sponsored pension plan
and fewer layoffs than a high school diploma.
The more than one million undergraduate students heading to Canadian universities this fall will benefit from innovative
approaches to teaching and learning, including more opportunities for experiential learning. After graduation, they’ll enjoy
higher earnings and better employment outcomes than those without degrees.