In a recent Center for Digital Education (CDE) survey, 74 percent of responding higher education decision- makers said improving student retention and graduation rates is the top goal of their college or institution. The ability to retain and promote students not only influences college rankings, reputation and recruitment of top talent, but also impacts the bottom line. Enrolled students provide a steady revenue stream via tuition and other purchases (e.g., books, parking passes and food services). Student retention also allows recruitment dollars to go further by decreasing the need to continually replace students who have dropped out.
Social networking sites (SNSs) have gained substantial popularity among youth in recent years. However, the
relationship between the use of these Web-based platforms and mental health problems in children and adolescents
is unclear. This study investigated the association between time spent on SNSs and unmet need for mental health support, poor self-rated mental health, and reports of psychological distress and suicidal ideation in a representative sample of middle and high school children in Ottawa, Canada. Data for this study were based on 753 students (55% female; Mage = 14.1 years) in grades 7–12 derived from the 2013 Ontario Student Drug Use and Health Survey. Multinomial logistic regression was used to examine the associations between mental health variables and time spent using SNSs. Overall, 25.2% of students reported using SNSs for more than 2 hours every day, 54.3% reported using SNSs for 2 hours or less every day, and 20.5% reported infrequent or no use of SNSs. Students who reported unmet need for mental health support were more likely to report using
SNSs for more than 2 hours every day than those with no identified unmet need for mental health support. Daily SNS use of more than 2 hours was also independently associated with poor self-rating of mental health and experiences of high levels of psychological distress and suicidal ideation. The findings suggest that students with poor mental health may be greater users of SNSs. These results indicate an opportunity to enhance the presence of health service providers on SNSs in order to provide support to youth.
The goals of Education for All (EFA) are centrally concerned with equality. If children are excluded from access to education, they are denied their human rights and prevented from developing their talents and interests in the most basic of ways. Education is a torch which can help to guide and illuminate their lives. It is the acknowledged responsibility of all governments to ensure that everyone is given the chance to benefit from it in these ways. It is also in the fundamental interests of society to
see that this happens – progress with economic and social development depends upon it.
Hindered by video screens, fluctuating schedules, and health regulations, teachers are up
against the odds this school year when it comes to getting to know their students.
International graduates of Canadian universities are “the perfect candidates” for citizenship, says immigration
minister
Canadian-educated international students are exactly the sort of would-be immigrants this country should be courting, the federal government has said as it moves on election promises to make immigration policy friendlier to international graduates of Canadian postsecondary institutions.
The government’s first step came in late February when it introduced legislation repealing changes made under the previous Conservative government’s controversial Bill C-24 of 2015. Although the Conservatives had made adjustments over time that generally made immigration policy more favourable to international students, Bill C-24, enforced in their last year in office, made it harder for international graduates of Canadian postsecondary programs to qualify for citizenship.
The Canadian Council on Learning (CCL) has been engaged through a competitive process by the Ontario Ministry of Education (hereafter “the Ministry”) to evaluate the extent to which the Student Success/Learning to 18 Strategy (hereafter “the SS/L18 Strategy”) as currently implemented is aligned with the Ministry’s three overarching goals and is producing the intended
outcomes related to its specific five goals. The evaluation process is composed of two main phases. This Stage 1 report provides a description and chronology of the SS/L18 Strategy-related changes; a catalogue and preliminary analysis of source documents relevant to the initiative; the results of an analysis of interviews with 39 respondents identified for the initial stage of the evaluation; the results of four focus groups conducted with Student Success Leaders (SSLs); preliminary
observations about the conduct of the SS/L18 Strategy, its strengths and vulnerabilities, as well as some preliminary recommendations for the future of the Strategy.
One in three students globally is enrolled in private higher education institutions, according to research that reveals the huge growth and wide reach of private providers.
The analysis, the first study based on comprehensive data on the size and shape of private higher education internationally, finds that private institutions have 56.7 million students on their books, or 32.9 percent of the world’s enrollment.
Canada has one of the most highly educated populations in the world, a publicly funded health-care system and a growing appreciation for contributions that ongoing learning makes to the health and well-being of individuals and to the quality of life within our communities.
However, new health literacy maps of Canada show that our country is not a picture of health. Six in 10 Canadian adults do not have the skills needed to adequately manage their health and health-care needs.
Labour market information (LMI) helps Canadians find information about jobs and labour market trends and outlooks.
LMI should allow employers to see who is available to recruit, what their skills are, where they are located and what kind of workers will be coming on stream, including via post-secondary education and immigration.
Older workers’ (aged 50-64) job retention in the paid labour force has come to the fore because of the shortfall in availability of skilled labour now and in Canada’s future and the projection of a ‘greying population.’ Employing mixed methods, the research focused on the unique approaches and challenges experienced by older professionals in informal learning, the everyday experiences in which people learn. In addition, the research focused on the practices of documenting (methods for keeping track of learning), assessing (making judgements about learning), and supporting (methods that facilitate learning) that are helpful for older workers’ informal learning practices. The project focused on Certified Management Accountants (CMAs), knowledge workers whose continuous learning is urgent in Canada’s ‘hot economy’ and whose professional associations have made learning a priority.
Programs that allow foreign workers to occupy positions in Canada have existed since the 1960s and were formally introduced in legislation in the 1970s. While they generally focused on skilled workers, they were expanded to lower-skilled occupations in 2002.
While generally considered beneficial from an economic perspective, foreign workers have received significant public attention in recent years. This is the case especially in relation to foreign workers occupying low-skilled positions, considering that most unemployed Canadian workers would meet the minimum requirements to fill these jobs satisfactorily.
Since their creation in 1965, Ontario’s colleges have played a pivotal role in providing PSE opportunities to all residents (Rae, 2005). Often located in smaller and more geographically dispersed communities than Ontario’s universities, colleges were intended to be more responsive to and reflective of these communities (Canadian Council on Learning, 2010) and to work closely with business and labour sectors to ensure programming that produced employment-ready graduates (Rae, 2005).
This article examines the approach to teaching social skills in two kinds of colleges: community colleges, and private for-profit and nonprofit ‘‘occupational’’ colleges, with a focus on college credit programs that lead to applied associate’s degrees in a variety of business, health, computer, and technical occupational programs. Nearly all occupational faculty at both types of colleges believe that employers in these fields require certain social skills relevant to professional support occupations. Community college staff—with the exception of health programs—provide three reasons that they neither demand nor teach these social skills. In contrast, the ways in which private occupational colleges make these skills an explicit part of their curriculum is discussed. This study suggests that schools differ in whether they teach and cultivate social skills, which suggests a potentially important way that schools may shape students’ opportunities in the labor market and their social mobility. Contrary to Bowles and Gintis, these findings raise the disturbing possibility that community colleges may be actively contributing to the social reproduction of inequality by avoiding instruction in the cultural competencies and social skills required in today’s workplace
Using a variety of research approaches and instruments, previous research has revealed what university students tend to see as benefits and disadvantages of the integration of research in teaching. In the present study, a questionnaire was developed on the basis of categorizations of the research–teaching nexus in the literature. The aim of the Student Perception of Research Integration Questionnaire (SPRIQ) is to determine the factors that capture the way students perceive research integration in their courses. The questionnaire was administered among 221 students from five different undergraduate courses at a research intensive university in The Netherlands. Data analysis revealed four factors regarding research integration: motivation, reflection, participation, and current research. These factors are correlated with students’ rating of the quality of the course and
with their beliefs about the importance of research for their learning. Moreover, courses could be distinguished in terms of research intensiveness, from the student perspective, based on the above-mentioned factors. It is concluded that the SPRIQ helps to understand how students perceive research integration in specific courses and is a promising tool to give feedback to teachers and program managers who aim to strengthen links between research, teaching, and student learning.
Mental health is a growing concern for all Canadians. To date, it is estimated that approximately 20% of Canadians will experience some sort of mental illness in their lifetime1. It also remains a pressing issue for students across Canadian campuses as institutions continue to signal a rise in the number of mental health cases.
This paper argues that competency-based training in vocational education and training in Australia is one mechanism through which the working class is denied access to powerful knowledge represented by the academic disciplines. The paper presents a modified Bernsteinian analysis to argue that VET students need access to disciplinary knowledge using Bernstein’s argument that abstract, conceptual knowledge is the means societies use to think ‘the unthinkable’ and ‘the not-yet-thought’. I supplement Bernstein’s social argument for democratic access to the disciplines, with an epistemic argument that draws on the philosophy of critical realism.
Keywords: competency-based training; academic disciplines; sacred and profane knowledge; vertical and horizontal discourse.
Abstract
Achieving tenure and promotion are significant milestones in the career of a university faculty member. However, research indicates that racialized and female faculty do not achieve tenure and promotion at the same rate as their non-racialized and male counterparts. Using new survey data on faculty in eight Canadian universities, this article examines differences in being tenured and promoted between racialized and non-racialized faculty and between female and non-female faculty. It also investigates the extent to which explanations of human capital theory and cultural or identity taxation account for these disparities. Logistic regression confirms that controlling for human capital and cultural or identity taxation washes away the differences between being tenured and promoted for female faculty. Differences for racialized faculty remain, offering evidence of racial discrimination in the academic system.
Résumé
L’obtention de la permanence et la promotion sont des jalons importants de la carrière d’un professeur d’université. Cependant, des recherches scientifiques indiquent que les professeurs racialisés et les femmes n’obtiennent pas de permanence et de promotion au même rythme que leurs homologues non racialisés et de sexe masculin. En utilisant de nouvelles données provenant d’une enquête menée auprès de professeurs dans huit universités canadiennes, cet article scrute les différences entre les taux de permanence et de promotion des professeurs racialisés et non racialisés, ainsi qu’entre femmes et non femmes, afin d’analyser dans quelle mesure la théorie du capital humain ou celle de l’imposition culturelle ou identitaire explique
ces disparités. La régression logistique confirme qu’en contrôlant le capital humain ou l’imposition culturelle ou identitaire, les différences de permanence ou de promotion parmi les femmes disparaissent. Cependant, même avec ce contrôle, les différences demeurent pour les professeurs racialisés, ce qui fournit une preuve que la discrimination raciale existe dans le système universitaire.
This short document presents a synthesis of the main findings emerging from the six case studies aimed at identifying the characteristics of innovative North-South university partnerships conducted by the Association of Universities and Colleges of Canada (AUCC) in 2012. It includes an overview of the purpose of the study and details on how it was conducted, including a refresher on the analytical framework utilized to design the data collection and analysis tools. The last section presents a summary of the findings emerging from the study and some recommendations addressed to the funders of these partnerships, participating universities and faculty members as well as possible next steps.
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.
The Ohio State University Undergraduate and Master's/ Professional Graduation Surveys were first administered in the spring term of 2011 and are administered at the end of each term by the Office of Student Life. The surveys gather information about the career and education plans of potential graduates, as well as students’ satisfaction with Ohio State. In recent years, data from
the academic terms comprising the academic year (summer, autumn, and spring) have been compiled. This report presents the results from the spring 2012, autumn 2012/spring 2013, the 2013-2014, and 2014-2015 administrations. Please note that the surveys have changed over time and this report compares findings when direct comparisons are available across years.