Almost 40 per cent of the most highly rated private career colleges in Ontario appear to be failing to prepare students for the labour market, with a third of graduates at 58 out of 159 campuses unable to find any work six months after graduation.
The numbers, released by the provincial government this spring and analyzed by The Globe and Mail, raise renewed questions about whether public money should be used to help students attend the private institutions. Data were made public only for the schools the province has approved as eligible for financial aid.
Between June 2013 and June 2014, 11 graduates from the School of Education at Laurentian
University,most teaching in smaller communities scattered across northern Ontario, were interviewed about their recent experiences. The purpose of these interviews was to determine how well the concurrent education program had prepared these graduates for the realities of teaching in First Nation, Métis and Inuit (FNMI) remote and rural communities in the province. Five of the graduates’ administrators or school principals were also interviewed to determine how thoroughly teacher
training had prepared the graduates to work in the north and how the program could be improved.
During the economic doldrums that have followed The Great Recession, employees in the education sector (administrators, staff, and teachers or faculty at both the K-12 level and the post-secondary level) are confident about both their retirement savings behavior and their likely retirement outcomes. African American and white American employees in the education sector are more optimistic about their retirement planning and prospects than are U.S. workers overall. Education sector employees—both African Americans (87%) and white Americans (88%)—are more likely than U.S. workers overall (59%) to currently save for retirement. This fact helps justify their greater confidence that they will have enough money to live comfortably throughout retirement. Seven of every ten black American employees and seven of every ten white American employees are confident (‘very’ or ‘somewhat’) of this, while nearly half of all U.S. workers express this level of confidence.
Should copyright law lock down music and literature to protect the financial interests of rights-holders? Or should it promote broad access to, and use of, intellectual goods? These questions are at the core of the growing public debate over the need for fair and balanced copyright law, a debate that college and university students have a critical stake in. As creators and owners of copyright material (essays, articles, theses and multi-media productions), students need to protect their work from unjust appropriation. But to study, research, write and create new knowledge, students also need ready access, at a reasonable cost, to the copyrighted works of others. This tri-part perspective—of use, creation and ownership of copyright—gives students special credibility in the struggle for fair and balanced copyright law.
The crisis — and there is no other word for it — in public schooling is a function of the interaction of an enormous push-pull dynamic. The push factor is that students find schooling increasingly boring as they proceed across the grades. Studies from many countries show that among high school students less than 40% of upper secondary students are intellectually
engaged (Jenkins, 2013; Willms et al., 2009). And, not unrelated, signs of teacher frustration are growing. For example, in the U.S the percentage of teachers who are satisfied with teaching has plummeted from 65% to 38% from 2008 to 2012. Teachers and students are psychologically if not literally being pushed out of school. Meanwhile prodigious technology is alluring all, kids and
adults alike, to the digital world, not necessarily productively. Within this allure we are seeing exciting new learning modes emerging from the interaction of pedagogy and technology. Education under these terms needs to be radically rethought — partly to stop the boredom, but mostly to blow the lid off learning, whereby students and teachers as partners become captivated by education day in and day out.
Technology is gradually replacing cursive instruction—but have we taken stock of what we’re losing?
Should cursive writing still be taught in our schools? The old debate is back with a vengeance as schools shift resources from the intricate, painstakingly rendered script to keyboard skills.
In 2007, business, education and labour leaders came together to form Ontario’s Workforce Shortage Coalition, dedicated to raising awareness of the emerging skills shortage challenge. The coalition represents more than100,000 employers and millions of employees.
A Conference Board of Canada report prepared for the coalition predicted Ontario will face a shortage of more than 360,000 employees by 2025. Employers will need more highly skilled workers as technology changes and competition for customers grows tougher. As well, baby boomers are retiring and the number of young workers is about to plummet.
Dan Lang
Can all the universities that claim to be “world-class” actually live up to the claim? If they could be, would that be desirable public policy? It could be that there are so many different meanings of “world-class” that the term in practical effect is an oxymoron: the definition of “world” is determined locally when conceptually it should be defined internationally.
This paper discusses different kinds of institutional quality, how quality is formed and how it can be measured, particularly by comparison. It also discusses the subtle but fundamental differences between quality and reputation. The paper concludes with the suggestion that world-class comparisons of research quality and productivity are possible, but that any broader application to the “world-class” quality of universities will be at best futile and at worst misleading.
The labour force participation rate of 15- to 24-year-olds (the percentage who are employed or seeking employment) declined from 67.3% in 2008 to 64.2% in 2014, reflecting a 3.8-percentage- point drop from 2008 to 2012 followed by a slight increase (Chart 1). The decline was particularly pronounced among youth aged 15 to 19, whose participation rate fell 6.2 percentage points to 49.8% in 2014.
This research uses the Youth in Transition Survey (YITS) to compare participation in postsecondary education (PSE) in Ontario to such participation in other Canadian regions. We begin by presenting access rates by region, which reveals some substantial differences. University participation rates in Ontario are in about the middle of the pack, while college rates are relatively high. We then undertake an econometric analysis, which reveals that the effects of parental income are quite strong in the Atlantic provinces but much weaker elsewhere, including within Ontario. We also find that the relationship between high school grades and Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) test scores (measures of academic “performance” and “ability”) differ by region and are generally strongest in Ontario. From this perspective, Ontario would appear to have a relatively “meritocratic” system, where those who are more qualified are more likely to go to university and where overall attendance rates are less affected by family income. Interestingly, the effects of parental education, which are generally much stronger than family income, are similar across provinces. Understanding the reasons underlying these patterns might warrant further investigation.
The question of how to hold Ontario’s universities accountable to the needs of students is a relatively complex one. One must be careful to balance the need for academic freedom with the public’s (and especially students’) right to be assured that its considerable investments into postsecondary institutions are being used effectively and appropriately. OUSA’s Accountability paper offers recommendations to improve quality assurance and strategic goal-setting in Ontario’s universities. In essence, it
describes students’ vision of to whom, for what, and how universities should be held accountable.
In early 2015 the government of Ontario announced that it would be conducting a review of the processes by which it funds universities. In order to best capture the needs of those that consume, deliver and fund higher education, the government has commissioned extensive consultation with parents, students, universities, employers, agencies, and sector experts. This submission will serve as a summary of the Ontario Undergraduate Student Alliance’s contributions to those discussions, as well as a statement of our principles in the area of funding priorities that could benefit students.
Background/Context: In contrast to cultural constructs that equate education with cognitive development and formal schooling, the Latin American cultural model of educación encompasses academic knowledge and social competence. Prior scholarship has mainly investigated parental notions of educación vis-à-vis childrearing and schooling, primarily among Mexican Americans and
Puerto Ricans. Analysis of educación should include other nationalities and elucidate how adults believe educación is acquired and linked both to schooling and nonformal adult education and literacy.
Purpose/Objective/Research Question/Focus of Study: The purpose of this article is to explicate how former adult literacy participants in rural El Salvador perceived the meanings of educación, how one becomes an educated person, and how educación relates to schooling and literacy.
The expansion of public, postsecondary education and the attendant additional costs associated with that expansion are significant concerns to governments everywhere. Ontario is no exception. Innovation in the delivery of academic programs holds the potential to contain costs, improve quality, and enhance accountability. This project is intended to assist the Higher Education Quality Council of Ontario (HECQO) to better understand how a shift to competency-based education might affect the cost and quality of higher education programs, institutions and systems and to investigate how competency-based education might enhance the productivity and accountability of public higher education systems and institutions.
As the global marketplace becomes increasingly competitive and knowledge-driven the potential social and economic benefits of education have increased. As a result, the past few decades have witnessed an unprecedented expansion in the demand for post-secondary education (PSE) worldwide.
The Canadian Council on Learning monograph series, Challenges in Canadian Post-secondary Education, was launched in November 2009 as a means of examining the impact of this expansion on the PSE sector.
Observational skills, honed through experience with the literary and visual arts, bring together in a timely manner many of the goals of the medical humanities, providing thematic cohesion through the act of seeing while aiming to advance clinical skills through a unified practice. In an arts observation pedagogy, nature writing serves as an apt model for precise, clinically relevant linguistic noticing because meticulous attention to the natural world involves scientific precision; additionally, a number of visual metaphors employed in medicine are derived from close observation of the natural world. Close reading reinforces observational skills as part of integrative, multidisciplinary clinical practice. Literary precision provides an educational bridge to recognizing the importance of detail in the clinical realm. In weighing multiple perspectives, observation applied to practice helps learners understand the nuances of the role of witness, activating reflection consonant with the viewer’s professional identity. The realization that seeing is highly filtered through the observer’s values allows the act of observation to come under scrutiny, opening the observer’s gaze to disturbance and challenging the values and precepts of the prevailing medical culture. Application of observational skills can, for example, help observers recognize and address noxious effects of the built environment. As learners describe what they see, they also develop the communication skills needed to articulate both problems and possible improvements within their expanding sphere of influence. The ability to craft
this speech as public narrative can lead to interventions with positive impacts on physicians, their colleagues, and patients.
In their initial study, authors Boston, Ice, and Gibson (2011) explored the relationship between student demographics and interactions, and retention at a large online university. Participants in the preliminary study(n = 20,569) included degree-seeking undergraduate students who completed at least one course at the American Public University System (APUS) in 2007. Two notable findings from the study were (1) the importance of transfer credit, and (2) the consistency of activity in predicting continued enrollment.Interestingly, the latter finding was confirmed upon the analysis of longitudinal data from the current study.Further related to the latter finding-yet unexpected, was the existence of new literature that, although subtle,affirms the importance for online institutions to conduct ongoing research on these topics. Readers of the current study are encouraged to refer to the preliminary study toward a comprehensive understanding of these nuances. Though informative, the researchers wished to validate the original study findings through longitudinal evaluation of retention.
The highly volatile monthly job creation figures and an unemployment rate that sometimes masks more than it reveals get all the attention. But the real tale of the Canadian labour market is written far away from the spotlights, closer to where the details reside. And there, the emerging picture is of a job market that is fundamentally changing. Canadian employment dances
increasingly to the tune of structural forces and less to reversible cyclical dynamics. And it’s not only about demographics. Job market mismatches, sticky long-term unemployment, diverging bargaining power, rising entry barriers and increased job tenure and job stability for those who clear the bar, all suggest that monetary policy aimed at the cyclical component of employment slack is aiming at a shrinking target.
This paper explores the potential of cultural-historical activity theory (CHAT), to provide new insights into community service-learning (CSL) in higher education.While CSL literature acknowledges the influences of John Dewey and Paolo Freire, discussion of the potential contribution of cultural-historical activity theory, rooted in the work of Russian psychologist Lev Vygotsky, is noticeably absent. This paper addresses this gap by examining four assumptions associated with activity theory: the rejection of a theory/practice divide, the development of knowledge as a social collaborative activity, the focus on contradictions
in and across activity systems, and the interventionist approach aimed at transformation.
The Cities Project at the Martin Prosperity Institute focuses on the role of cities as the key economic and social organizing unit of global capitalism. It explores both the opportunities and challenges facing cities as they take on this heightened new role.
The Martin Prosperity Institute, housed at the University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Management, explores the requisite underpinnings of a democratic capitalist economy that generate prosperity that is both robustly growing and broadly experienced.