Probing the question of the effectiveness and applicability of outcomes-based funding policy for higher education in Ontario requires an approach that (1) reviews current research and policy literatures on this topic and (2) differentiates and contextualizes the knowledge available. In order to evaluate successful and unsuccessful policy features and institutional practices, it is important to take stock of current policies across varied provincial, state, regional and national contexts, as well as over time. The topic of outcomes-based funding has received considerable and continuing attention in the research and policy literatures, and syntheses of these are currently available (e.g., Dougherty & Reddy, 2011, 2013; Frøhlich, Schmidt & Rosa, 2010; National Conference of State Legislatures, 2013). However, a comprehensive policy-relevant perspective can only be a product of extended study that considers policy contexts internationally and provides an actionable, differentiated view on the research and policy in this area. This study will examine policy and research literature to address the following research questions:
The signatory institutions to this protocol agree to maximize their contribution to a sustainable future and are committed to their role as leaders to their internal and external communities.
In the context of this protocol, sustainability is institutionally defined and may include environmental, economic and social dimensions.
When viewed holistically, Canada lacks a clear and common understanding of the future directions and top priorities of its post-secondary education (PSE) sector. Perhaps as a result, Canada has not yet comprehensively addressed a fundamental question: How do we demonstrate quality in PSE? To answer this question requires clarification of many issues, including the roles that various institutions and sectors play. It also requires the development of a shared vision of PSE, of what can and should be achieved. Despite much discussion among leaders of various education sectors in Canada, an agreement on a plan of action has yet to be reached. Indeed, a national dialogue on this critical issue is needed.
Inside Higher Ed’s eighth annual survey of college and university presidents seeks to understand how these leaders view the opportunities and challenges facing higher education institutions in the U.S.
This study addresses the following questions:
• What effects do presidents perceive the election of Donald Trump had on their campus and on higher education more generally?
• What are presidents’ views of some of the federal policies that affect higher education?
• Are presidents confident in the sustainability of their institution’s financial model over the next 5 and 10 years?
• Do presidents believe the business models used in various sectors of higher education are sustainable?
• Do presidents anticipate that additional colleges will close or merge in the coming year?
• What are presidents’ opinions about tuition resets or tuition freezes?
• What are presidents’ biggest concerns about the size and composition of their student body?
• How do presidents assess race relations at their institution and at colleges nationwide?
• Do college presidents believe that Americans have an accurate view of the purposes of higher education?
• What factors do presidents see as causing declines in public support for higher education?
• How vocal have presidents been about political matters?
• How well prepared do presidents think they were for the various tasks of a college presidency when they first became a president?
Aboriginal learners who have followed their passion and found their voice at Ontario universities are spreading the word to their peers in a series of testimonials about the transformative power of a university education in hopes of inspiring other Aboriginal youth to see the benefit of higher education.
PhDs can feel boxed into a limited range of job options, particularly just after graduate school or a postdoc. But doctoral degree holders work in a wide range of roles. I myself work as a life coach and entrepreneur, hardly what I expected I’d do after a history PhD! Career exploration was crucial in my case: I felt lukewarm about all the choices I thought I had; I needed to look elsewhere.
“Don’t be afraid to explore options that are outside your comfort zone,” says Jessica Hartshorn, a forest health specialist for the Minnesota department of natural resources. She encourages new grads to try different things. “People get tunnel vision in the job market and often forget that it’s okay to try things and move on. No matter what you do you will learn a lot about your field, and about yourself, and nothing is permanent.” Dr. Hartshorn echoes what my conference co-host Maren Wood tells PhDs: “Your first job is not your last job.”
At one point during my year spent adjuncting, a former graduate school classmate who was now a tenured professor told me that I was lucky. I didn’t, he helpfully explained, have to attend department meetings, and I was only teaching one course.
Anyone familiar with adjunct life -- the anxiety about money, the constant search for the next job, the terrible work conditions -- knows that this classmate-turned-professor’s comment was ignorant at best. Now, having finally landed a tenure-track professorship, I understand better the extent of his ignorance. It went beyond his obliviousness to what a $3,000-a-semester job
means.
A major force in the higher education technology and learning space has quietly begun working with a major corporate force in -- well, in almost everything else.
Candace Thille, a pioneer in learning science and open educational delivery, has taken a leave of absence from Stanford University for a position at Amazon, the massive (and getting bigger by the day) retailer.
Thille’s title, as confirmed by an Amazon spokeswoman: director of learning science and engineering. In that capacity, the spokeswoman said, Thille will work “with our Global Learning Development Team to scale and innovate workplace learning at Amazon.”
As Canadian businesses look for new ways to empower workplace learning to meet demands to achieve more while having fewer resources available for training and development, interest in delivering programs using different kinds of instructional pproaches (e.g., face-to-face, problem-based learning, coaching) combined with a variety of technologies (e.g. discussion boards, e-content, conference calls) – generally referred to as blended learning – is growing. These blended learning strategies can be designed to provide opportunities for supporting just-in-time (i.e., immediate) access to learning tools and supports anywhere, anytime - especially important when the objective is to improve performance on the job. Generally, research in this area has focused on comparisons of classroom versus online courses versus blended programs indicating blended programs out-deliver either online or classroom when used alone. However, analysis of the impact of different blended learning strategies on personal soft-skills (e.g., coaching, teamwork, critical thinking) development and job performance has not been given much attention. The focus of this research study was to compare the learning impact/outcomes of four different blended learning strategies (offered in parallel in each of four research groups) based on a theoretical model emerging from work reported by Adams (2004). Each level in the model was defined by a different blended learning strategy that moves from a very loose coupling of personal learning with job performance in level 1 (e.g., online learning used as a background resource for self-directed learning), to tighter and tighter couplings of learning with job performance in level 2 (e.g., online materials integrated with a structured classroom course and required as pre-and post work) and level 3 where online learning materials were integrated with personal learning objectives and blended with collaborative discussion forums and peer coaching. Level 4, defined in this model as a very tight coupling of personal learning with job performance in relation to the previous three blended learning strategies mentioned involved using online learning materials to support personal job-based projects where participants worked on the projects as part of their learning (i.e., an action-learning pedagogical approach) where a demonstrable return on learning (ROL) was measured.
Le projet Comprendre le concept de force en sciences est né de l’initiative des ministères de l’Éducation de l’Ontario et du Québec dans le cadre d’une entente de collaboration signée par les deux Premiers Ministres de ces provinces concernant le secteur de l’éducation ainsi que d’autres secteurs d’activité.
C’est une étude comparative, de nature collaborative et de type exploratoire, qui s’est déroulée de mai 2007 à mai 2008. Elle pourrait être suivie d’une étude plus approfondie et de plus d’envergure selon l’intérêt des résultats présentés ci-dessous de même que la disponibilité des ressources disponibles.
This is a multiple case study of seven colleges using field methods research to examine institutional life and organizational context. This study determines that community colleges in both Canada and the United States exhibited educational and work behaviors in the 1990s consistent with the globalization process. Education was oriented to the marketplace, and the needs of business and industry received high priority in educational programming. Work within these institutions was valued for and carried out with economic ends: to realize productivity and efficiency.
In 2014, the Government of Ontario signaled its intent to review the formula by which Ontario’s universities are funded. In Premier Kathleen Wynne’s Mandate letter to Reza Moridi, Minister of Training, Colleges, and Universities (MTCU), she asked him to:
“[Work] with postsecondary institutions and the Higher Education Quality Council of Ontario to improve the consistency and availability of institution-level and system-level outcome measures. These measures will help inform the allocation of graduate spaces, updated program approval processes and the implementation of a reformed funding model for universities.”
In the United States, slightly more than half of all students (51 percent) who begin university study complete their degree in their initial institution within six years. Though some students eventually earn their degrees via transfer to another university or college, it remains a fact that for many institutions in the United States dropout is often as frequent as graduation. Of course, universities and colleges vary considerably. Some elite private universities such as Harvard and Princeton graduate over 90% of their students and several very selective public universities such as the University of California at Los Angeles, the University of Virginia, and the University of Michigan, graduate over 80% of their students. On the other hand, many open-enrollment universities, especially those in the large cities, graduate less than 30% of their students.
In the second edition of Six Lenses for Anti-Oppressive Education: Partial Stories, Improbable Conversations, editors Bic Ngo and Kevin Kumashiro bring together multiple perspectives that examine, analyze, and bring to the fore systemic oppressive social relations. They investigate racism, (hetero)sexism, white privilege, classism, and the global neoliberal economic system, as well as offer tools—or lenses—for conceptualizing anti-oppressive education.
Ensuring access to postsecondary education (PSE) for all qualified individuals is key to Ontario’s future competitiveness and equally critical from an equity perspective. This paper provides an empirical analysis of access to PSE among a number of under-represented (and minority) groups in Ontario, including comparisons to other regions. Having parents that did not attend PSE is the most important factor across the country, and the effects are even greater in Ontario than in some other regions. Being from a low-income household is considerably less important than parental education, and the income effects are even smaller in Ontario than in certain other regions. Aboriginal and disabled youth are also strongly under-represented groups in PSE in Ontario, driven entirely by their lower university participation rates, offset to different degrees by higher college participation rates . Rural students are also significantly under-represented (though to a lesser degree) in university, but again go to college at somewhat higher rates. Furthermore, for these latter groups, Ontario does not compare favourably to other regions. The children of immigrants are much more likely to go to university but somewhat less likely to attend college almost everywhere. Being from a single parent family has little independent effect on access to PSE, as is also the case for being a Francophone outside of Quebec, the latter effect in some cases actually being positive. Intriguingly, although females generally have significantly higher PSE (especially university) attendance rates than males, females in under-represented groups are generally more disadvantaged than males.
The overarching message of this report is that equality does not happen by accident.
The research reviewed suggests that education policy makers should ensure that gender equality is a
real rather than a rhetorical priority and that change is substantively resourced in teacher
education and in school practices.
The publication of this report is part of our ongoing commitment to promoting gender equality in European schools and societies. A complementary report on gender and educational attainment will be published by Eurydice in November 2009. Also in November, a conference on gender and educational attainment organised by the Swedish Presidency of the European Union will bring together many of the key actors with the aim to providing an improved basis for further European policy
cooperation in this field.
We have seen considerable discussion in recent Inside Higher Ed articles about “Teaching Excellence”, whether at the individual or institutional levels. We know this concept can be problematic: a focus on Excellent Teaching can have negative side effects in promoting an individualistic and competitive environment.
I think we need to consider a shift in focus, from Excellent Teaching to Exemplary Teaching ‒ again, at both the individual and institutional levels. A focus on Exemplary Teaching could promote a collective outcome of surpassing past accomplishments in teaching and learning, by fostering professional teaching at the individual level and coopetition at the institutional level (i.e., “cooperation in creating value, competition in dividing it up”).
Post-secondary education is effectively a requirement to succeed in today’s labour market. Unfortunately, while the demand for education has increased, public funding has failed to keep up. Public funding shortfalls have resulted in a significant growth of costs that have been downloaded onto individual students, namely in the form of high tuition fees. From 1990 to 2014, national average tuition fees have seen an inflation-adjusted increase of over 155%. In Ontario, tuition fees have increased over 180%.
Effective classroom management is much more than just administering corrective measures when a student misbehaves; it's about developing proactive ways to prevent problems from occurring in the first place while creating a positive learning environment.
Establishing that climate for learning is one of the most challenging aspects of teaching, and one of the most difficult skills to master. For those new to the profession, failure to set the right tone will greatly hinder your effectiveness as a teacher. Indeed, even experienced faculty may sometimes feel frustrated by classroom management issues. Strategies that worked for years suddenly become ineffective in the face of some of the challenges today’s students bring with them to the classroom.
As reported in June 2016, UNHCR estimates that 65.3 million persons were forcibly displaced displaced, 21 million of whom were refugees. Such staggering numbers are unprecedented. Here, we explore the response of Canadian universities and colleges to the crisis in ways that are fulfilling their role as actors for social public good. In addition to offering courses and conducting research that delve into global forced displacement issues across a variety of disciplines, the response of Canadian higher education institutions can be organized broadly into three types of activities. One, they have intensified involvement with refugee sponsorship and scholarships. Two, they have provided advocacy and legal assistance for sponsors and refugees. Three, institutions have organized and participated in forums to share and discuss ideas and engage with other actors to identify needs, effective practices and innovative interventions.