Quality post-secondary education (PSE) is an overlooked and often unseen factor in the promotion of the spiritual, emotional and physical well-being of First Nations and Inuit peoples. The numbers back this up; on average, First Nations and Inuit peoples have lower PSE achievement levels, higher rates of unemployment and lower incomes than non-Aboriginal people. In addition to educational and economic advantages, higher educational attainment levels have been shown to be related to improved health and a better standard of living. Therefore, the promotion of increased post-secondary education for First Nations and Inuit peoples is by default promoting an invigorating, fortifying future for Aboriginal people, families and communities.
A Guide to Academic Accommodations and Managing your Mental Health while on Campus
One in five Canadians will experience a mental health problem this year1 and the onset of the symptoms of mental ill health often occur between the ages of 15 and 24.2 These numbers tell us that many students in postsecondary education will experience mental health problems while they are attending college or university. Ontario post-secondary institutions report a large
increase in the number of students with mental health disabilities registered with their Offices for Students with Disabilities (OSD). Some students come to university or college with a diagnosed mental health condition such as depression or anxiety. Other students develop symptoms of mental ill health gradually while they are at school and may not realize that they need professional help.
This report examines the postsecondary attrition and academic performance of males (compared to females) and students with disabilities, two groups on which limited research is currently available. The research addresses four main issues: 1) differences in attrition patterns among the targeted sub-populations, 2) a comparison of the background, demographic, psychosocial and study skill variables that lead to attrition and poor first semester performance, 3) the predictive value of these variables for the targeted sub-populations in identifying students who are at risk at the time they enter college and 4) reasons given by students for leaving postsecondary study prior to completing their diplomas. The analysis included those students who commenced studies for the first time at a large non-residential English college in Quebec between 1990 and 2007. The college offers three-year career programs (26% of enrolments) and two-year programs leading to university entrance (68% of enrolments). Six percent of students are also enrolled in qualifying studies. In addition to the high school average, we compared three groups of variables 1) six background variables obtained from the students’ records (Records variables), 2) nine variables obtained from the college’s annual incoming student survey (ISS variables) and 3) ten psychosocial and study skill variables obtained from the Student Readiness Inventory (SRI variables) (ACT Testing Services, 2008). The following provides a summary of the findings
related to each of our research questions.
According to data released by Statistics Canada in 2014, the years of 2000 - 2010 have seen significant increases in large
and private debt among graduating students, and skyrocketing private debt among graduates with doctoral degrees. Although
the percentage of graduates in debt appears to be decreasing overall in this decade, this is both because of the introduction
of the Canada Student Grants Program (which turns a portion of student loans into non-repayable grants) and because enrollment growth has outpaced increases in student loan borrowing. Even so, those who are borrowing are taking on much higher debts,
and increasingly from private sources.
Many countries strive to make postsecondary education maximally accessible to their citizens under the assumption that educated citizens boost innovation and leadership, resulting in social and economic benefits. However, attempts to increase access, especially in contexts of stagnant or diminishing financial support, can result in ever-increasing class sizes. Two aspects of large classes are extremely worrisome. First, economic and logistical constraints have led many such classes to devolve into settings characterized by lectures, readings and multiple-choice tests, thereby denying students experience and exercise with important transferable skills (e.g., critical thought, creative thought, self-reflective thought, expressive and receptive communication). Second, such classes are depicted as cold and impersonal, with little sense of community among students.
Has there ever been a worse time for faculty and university administrators? Faculty and administrators alike are under siege on multiple fronts—huge budget cuts have been made in most states with more expected, collective bargaining has come under attack in some states, and an underlying threat to tenure permeates academe. A historian might simply attribute this to a poor economy and conclude that such conflicts, cyclical in nature, will pass. But it is far from clear that this storm will subside as others have. Higher education is at a critical juncture and many legislators, donors, trustees, and tuition-payers are fed up with academe’s perceived excesses and excuses.
Postsecondary education systems around the world are rapidly transforming in response to evolving economic, social, and student learning realities. A number of factors are converging to bring about this reconfiguration of higher learning economies and are adjusting to heightened competition and to increased labour market demand for great levers of knowledge and skills; increasingly diverse and mobile learners are expecting ever-increasingly high quality in return for what they pay; and the broader public is looking for concrete results from the investment of scarce public resources.
Student pathways increasingly rely on transfer between postsecondary institutions as greater numbers of students move between institutions, pursue multiple credentials, or return to postsecondary education. In a 2011 survey of Ontario college students, 41% reported having some post-secondary experience; the same survey also found that 19% of respondents said their main goal in applying for their current program was to “prepare for further university or college study.” Transfer of credit for prior learning is clearly an increasingly mainstream educational activity, and institutions are under increasing pressure to improve the processes by which this occurs.
The Canadian Graduate and Professional Student Survey (CGPSS) is a national survey that was completed by over 51,000 students across 48 universities in 2013. This comprehensive survey includes questions covering a broad array of topics including students’ satisfaction with their departments, programs and advisors, availability of funding, use and quality of university services, and satisfaction with professional development supports (CAGS, 2010). This report uses data and opinions collected from graduate students through the CGPSS in an effort to contribute to the conversation on graduate student education in Canada.
NEW YORK -- Administrators sometimes disagree with faculty members about the value of online education, and nthusiastic instructors sometimes clash with skeptics. But what can colleges do when their students are the ones esisting change?
he question emerged here last week as the Teagle Foundation, which supports liberal arts education, brought ogether grant recipients to provide updates on nine projects involving blended learning -- face-to-face courses with ome online content. The collaborative projects, many of which won’t conclude until 2017 and 2018, have attracted articipation from more than 110 faculty members and staffers and 115 students at about 40 colleges and universities in 16 states.
Background/Context:Policy discussions in the U.S. and abroad have become increasingly studded with reference to the results of international tests like PISA. Unlike most assessments, PISA is not designed to measure whether students have mastered a particular school curriculum but rather provide a measure of students ability to meet future challenges irrespective of where in the world they live. Though growing in influence, the concept of a contextless form of accountability has an important antecedent in the history of American education: the Tests of General Educational Development (GED), which were developed in the 1940s to assist the transition of American World War II servicemen and women.
This paper reports the results of an analysis of persistence in post-secondary education (PSE) for college students in Ontario based on the extremely rich YITS-B dataset that has been used for other recent studies at the national level. We calculate hazard or transition rates (and cumulative transition rates) with respect to those who i) graduate, ii) switch programs, and iii) leave PSE (perhaps to return later). We also look at the reasons for switching and leaving, subsequent re-entry rates among leavers, and graduation and persistence rates once switchers and re-entrants are taken into account. These patterns are then probed in more detail using hazard (regression) models where switching and leaving are related to a variety of individual characteristics, family background, high school outcomes, and early pse experiences. Student pathways are seen to be varied. Perhaps the single most important finding is that the proportion of students who either obtain a degree or continue to be enrolled somewhere in the PSE system in the years after entering a first program remains close to the 80 percent mark for the five years following entry. Seventy-one percent of students graduate within five years of starting, while another 6 percent are still in the PSE system.
A partnership approach - retention framework.
Practical Nursing Diploma
What Do Colleges and Universities Want Students to Read Outside Class?
Tinto’s integration framework is often assumed to be inapplicable to the study of student persistence at community colleges because one of the linchpins of the framework — social integration — is considered unlikely to occur for students at these institutions. Community college students are thought to lack the time to participate in activities, such as clubs, that would facilitate social integration. Using in-depth interviews with students at two urban community colleges in the Northeast, we examine the ways that first-year community college students engage with their institutions. We find that the majority of them do develop attachments to their institutions. Moreover, this sense of attachment is related to their persistence in the second year of college. We also find that this integration is both academic and social. Contrary to findings from other studies that apply Tinto’s framework, we find that these two forms of integration develop in concert for community college students. The same activities lead to both academic and social relatedness. This is particularly true for information networks that students develop in the classroom.
Since the 1960s, there has been growing and sustained interest in small-group learning approaches at the school level and in higher education. A voluminous body of literature in this area addresses theory, research, classroom practice, and faculty development. The approaches most highly represented in the literature are cooperative learning, collaborative learning, and problem-based learning (PBL). In this article, the authors compare and contrast these approaches through answering questions such as the following: What are the unique features of each approach? What do the three approaches have in common? How are they similar, and how are they different?
Executive Summary
The upcoming (Fall 2014) undergraduate student referendum on the desirability of a Fall Break and recent adoption of a Fall Break on a three-year trial period by Wilfrid Laurier University have independently re-ignited the discussion at the University of Waterloo. Fourteen Ontario universities currently have a Fall Break, varying from 2-5 days in length. UW is among a small
number of institutions within Ontario who do not currently have one.
The primary challenge to arranging a Fall Break is finding sufficient space to schedule: 60 teaching days, a minimum of 2 pre-exam study days, and a minimum of 12 exam days while finishing by December 22. This challenge seems relatively easy to accomplish most years but is complicated by the occasional late Labour Day holiday.
Ontario is reviewing its university funding model, an enrolment-based formula through which the Ministry of Training, Colleges and Universities distributes a $3.5B annual provincial operating grant to the province’s 20 publicly assisted universities.
We examined the existing model in our June 2015 paper The Ontario University Funding Model in Context. We observed that the model is a relatively small (27 %) component of total university system revenues. We concluded that this small slice of funding must be managed in a focussed and strategic way if it is to be effective in shaping behaviour towards desired provincial objectives (HEQCO, 2015).
Research in commercial organizations has provided a multitude of examples on how leadership development can effectively foster employees’ performance and work-related attitudes such as commitment or satisfaction. In contrast, to date systematic leadership development is largely lacking for employees in higher education. However, we suggest that the positive effects of leadership development in commercial organizations also apply to the academic context. Thus, the purpose of this applied article is to present two approaches to the development of
leadership in higher education. More specifically, we provide a detailed description of two different programs offered to researchers at a large German university. The first program constitutes a leader development initiative for junior faculty on an individual level, whereas the second focuses on the development of leadership within university departments on a group level. We provide recommendations for establishing and evaluating effective leadership development in higher education.
The onset of economic downturn in late 2008 and early 2009 has had a varied effect on the Canadian economy. While much has been made about Canada’s relatively stable performance during this time, persistently high levels of youth unemployment since the downturn reveal that for a large number of Canadian youth, the impacts of recession have been deeply felt. Panelists and participants at the symposium Employment Challenges for Youth in a Changing Economy pointed to a need to uncover what the specific impacts of downturn have been, why high youth unemployment rates persist, and what can be done by policymakers, the private sector, and academic and community institutions to help youth realize their full potential.