Factors that contribute to post-secondary education participation and persistence, barriers to access, and the relationship between educational attainment and labour market outcomes.
One of the most intriguing expressions of human behavior is the leader-follower phenomenon. Since the beginning of civilization, people have sought answers to the questions of who becomes a leader and why. Philosophers, political scientists, and psychologists have produced extensive literature on leaders and leadership, but despite this, there is still no consensus as to why and under what circumstances some become leaders and others remain followers. There is no universal theory of leadership and no precise formula for producing leaders, and the answers are elusive. Furthermore, the debate continues about whether effective leadership and successful management are synonymous. Perhaps one of the best ways to answer some of these questions is to describe some of the views about leadership. This provides a beginning for defining leadership, for explaining the power associated with it, for discussi g the various current theories about it and for determining where theories coalesce and diverge.
The Ontario Confederation of University Faculty Associations (OCUFA) welcomes the opportunity to provide feedback on the Ministry of Training, Colleges and Universities’ summer roundtable discussion guide. The issues and proposed changes outlined in the guide would have a significant impact on university faculty and will require the support of the 17,000 faculty OCUFA represents if they are to be successful.
(Toronto, August 19, 2016) – For the first time in Ontario, McDonald’s employees can now receive credits towards
a college business diploma, thanks to a new agreement between Colleges Ontario and McDonald’s Restaurants of
Canada Limited.
The agreement will create a provincewide partnership with McDonald’s Canada, a leading Canadian business, to
establish a prior-learning recognition system. McDonald’s employees, who have completed specific McDonald’s training, will be eligible to be granted the equivalent of first-year credit for a business or business administration program at one of twenty-four (24) public colleges in Ontario. This may lead to significant cost-savings for eligible employees by reducing the number of courses and time required to earn a diploma – with potential savings of up to $4,500.
Colleges are under increasing pressure to retain their students. Federal and state officials are demanding that those who enter their public institutions— especially students from underrepresented groups— earn a degree. Over two dozen states disburse some state funding on how many students an institution graduates, rather than how many it enrolls. Students and families are more anxious than ever before about crossing the degree finish line, as the financial burden of paying for college has increased significantly in recent years. And retaining students is becoming more crucial to the university bottom line. As recruiting and educating students becomes increasingly expensive, colleges hope to balance the resources they use to recruit students with revenue generated when those students are retained.
Canada’s natural resource sector employs 1.8 million people and generates billions of dollars of tax revenues and royalties annually. Hundreds of resource projects are underway and many more are planned for the near future which, according to the federal government, could represent a total investment of $650 billion. Responsible resource management has significant implications for all Canadians, with revenues from projects supporting local and regional infrastructure development and social programs.
OUSA’s LGBTQ+ Student Experience Survey was a mixed methods research project conducted in Novem-ber 2014 designed to gain understanding of the opinions and experiences of Ontario university students who identify as Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans, Queer, Questioning, or other orientations or identities that do not conform to cisgender and heterosexual paradigms (LGBTQ+). The purpose of the survey was to identify any gaps that might exist in university services, programming, and supports that can diminish or negatively impact university experiences for these students.
Ignoring that advice I took close to maximum time to complete my PhD (well, that's how it felt): working, partaking in further study and publishing widely before formally graduating. I have the scars on my back to prove it, but it helped me get my start in academe.
The role of the PhD as a rite of passage to becoming an academic is but one of many contradictions in the profession.
The movement of students between postsecondary institutions is becoming increasingly common and has created a need for greater emphasis on postsecondary education (PSE) pathways. This report outlines the available data on postsecondary student mobility within Ontario, with a focus on mobility between Ontario’s colleges and universities.
This article was written in response to concerns that have been expressed about the possible consequences of an increasing number of countries overtaking the United States in educational attainment. International statistics on educational attainment are analyzed, questions about comparability of data are discussed, and the impact of different approaches to the organization of higher education on attainment rates is examined. The author concludes that comparing the rate of attainment of sub-baccalaureate credentials between the United States and other countries is problematic both because of definitional issues and as a consequence of the major transfer function of American community colleges. The article explains how colleges that previously offered short term vocational training in many European countries have evolved into vocationally-oriented baccalaureate granting institutions that have enabled their nations to achieve rapidly rising levels of baccalaureate degree attainment. It suggests that the experience of these countries may provide useful lessons – and cautions – for policy makers and educational leaders with respect to expanding the role of community colleges in awarding baccalaureate degrees.
ENVER -- The public -- and heck, many people in higher education -- widely assume prestigious colleges and universities provide the best quality education. That's why employers often want to hire their graduates and why many parents want their children to attend them.
And the assumption partially explains the fascination from the media and others in recent years with massive open online courses from Harvard and Stanford and other elite universities: the courses were believed, rightly or wrongly, to be of higher quality than all other online courses precisely because they came from name-brand institutions
Engaging communities in research increases its relevance and may speed the translation of discoveries into improved health outcomes. Many researchers lack training to effectively engage stakeholders, whereas academic institutions lack infrastructure to support community engagement.
I’m so lost! Your course is so confusing. Like, I really have no idea what to do and, like, I’m ready to simply cry and, like, drop this crazy course.”
Susie, a major in education, blinked, but no tears came; she just kept glaring at me with her elaborately made-up brown eyes. She had texted me the previous day about how stressed she was about my course, and I had invited her to come to my office at her leisure. But this wasn’t a great start to our heart-to-heart.
Residents of Eastern Ontario are most likely to identify "balancing the budget" as the most important issue currently facing the Ontario government.
The purpose of this quantitative study was to determine if a learning contract supported student milestone and degree completion for online doctoral degree programs. Further, students provided insights into aspects of the learning contract that were most supportive of their dissertation process. Data from this study were used to understand the benefit of using learning contracts in doctoral dissertations. Data were gathered from students who participated in the Ombuds Pathway to Completion. The research variables used in the study were milestone completion, degree completion, and factors predicting student success with a learning contract.
Significant investments are made in PSE at the provincial and federal level in Canada every year. At the federal level, the government spent over $12 billion on PSE in 2013-14.1 Annual federal investments in PSE are primarily made through the Canada Social Transfer, research support, various tax programs and the federal student financial aid system. CASA advocates on diverse issues related to improving student financial aid because it is an important mechanism for increasing access to PSE for all Canadians.
Student ratings of teaching have been used, studied, and debated for almost a century. This article examines student ratings of teaching from a statistical perspective. The common practice of relying on averages of student teaching evaluation scores as the primary measure of teaching effectiveness for promotion and tenure decisions should be abandoned for substantive and statistical reasons: There is strong evidence that student responses to questions of “effectiveness” do not measure teaching effectiveness. Response rates and response variability matter. And comparing averages of categorical responses, even if the categories are represented by numbers, makes little sense. Student ratings of teaching are valuable when they ask the right questions, report response rates and score distributions, and are balanced by a variety of other sources and methods to evaluate teaching.
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.
This document describes the development of analytic rubrics for competency assessment project. The purpose of this report is to describe the process of developing a set of general analytic rubrics to assess competencies in design, communication and teamwork, and a set of outcomes and indicators to assess problem analysis and investigation.
The work to develop the rubrics was structured into three main phases. In the first or planning phase, a review of the literature was carried out to create a comprehensive list of learning outcomes in the five competency areas under investigation. A list of more specific, measureable learning outcomes, called indicators, was also compiled. The resulting comprehensive list of learning outcomes and indicators was distilled by removing redundancy between the systems, filling content gaps, and grouping indicators into common learning outcome categories.
The number of students with disability in higher education is increasing. National data reveal differences in the retention and success of these students across Australian higher education institutions but the reasons for this are not clear. The overarching aim of this study was to explore the relationship between supports and university adjustment for students with disability, and their retention and success.