Co-operative education was one of the University of Waterloo’s (UW) defining characteristics when it opened in 1957 and it remains a foundational pillar today. With the support of its 4,500 employer partners, UW offers alternating terms of academic and workplace experience to more than 16,500 students from more than 120 different academic programs. These figures make UW the largest postsecondary co-op program in the world.
Maintaining strong employer relationships has been a critical success factor for UW’s co-op program. Both the relevant literature and the feedback received from employers have indicated that employability skills (communication, interpersonal skills, problem solving, etc.) are essential to success in today’s workplace (Hodges & Burchell, 2003; McMurtrey, Downey, Zeltmann & Friedman, 2008; Casner-Lotto & Barrington, 2006). A number of studies also indicate that employers are not satisfied with the employability skills of new graduates (Casner-Lotto & Barrington, 2006; AC Neilsen, 2000; Hart Research Associates, 2010).
Faculty are the critical labor element in the pursuit of the economic goals of community colleges, yet they are not central to institutional decision-making. Their views and values are not consistent with the goals and actions of their colleges. Instead, these goals and actions are aligned with business and industry, directed by government and college administrators. Although there is a misalignment of faculty values and institutional actions, faculty do not comprise an oppositional culture within their colleges. This multi-site qualitative study addresses the presence of tensions between educational values of faculty and the economic values of faculty work.
IQ tests and achievement tests do not capture non-cognitive skills — personality traits, goals, character and motivations that are valued in the labour market, in school and elsewhere. For many outcomes, their predictive power rivals or exceeds that of cognitive skills. Skills are stable across situations with different incentives. Skills are not immutable over the life cycle. While they have a genetic basis they are also shaped by environments, including families, schools and peers. Skill development is a dynamic process. The early years are important in shaping all skills and in laying the foundations for successful investment and intervention in the later years. During the early years, both cognitive and non-cognitive skills are highly malleable. During the adolescent years, non-cognitive skills are more malleable than cognitive skills. The differential
plasticity of different skills by age has important implications for the design of effective policies.
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.
Wilfrid Laurier University (Laurier) recognizes an individual’s right to work, study and live in an environment of mutual respect and understanding that is free from discrimination and all forms of Gendered and Sexual Violence. As such, Laurier is committed to addressing Gendered and Sexual Violence within the University Community through education, awareness, prevention, support and
accountability. Laurier acknowledges that deeply held social attitudes contribute to the perpetuation of Gendered and Sexual Violence and operate to minimize the understanding of the extent and impact of Gendered and Sexual Violence in our communities.
Public schools in the United States are almost as racially isolated today as they were 30 years ago and the majority of schools practice ability group-ing or academic tracking in ways that correlate with students’ race and socioeconomic status (SES). The articles in this set of special issues exam-ine these two organizational characteristics of schools and answer key questions: Does the racial, ethnic, and socioeconomic mix of a classroom or a school make a difference for the educational processes that take place in them? If composition is related to student outcomes, is the return to pre-1980 levels of racial isolation germane to either educational policy or practice?
The Public Policy Forum has organized a series of roundtables to discuss strategies to better connect First Nations, Metis and Inuit businesses and communities with affordable financing and new sources of funding. Our goal is to develop a series of concrete recommendations to help inform a comprehensive strategy that enhances First Nations, Metis and Inuit access to capital. The first roundtable was held in Toronto, with the focus of discussions being access to large-scale commercial financing. Our second roundtable was held in Vancouver and considered where capital can be better leveraged for First Nations, Metis and Inuit communities.
This story is featured in our 2016 Canadian Universities Guidebook, available on newsstands now. Pick up a copy of the guidebook for full profiles of 80 universities, insider reports written by current students on where to eat, study, and party, and the latest data including the grades needed to get into the school of your dreams and our definitive university rankings.
Information, it’s often said, is power. Yet when high school students are faced with one of the most important decisions of their lives—whether to attend college or university, and which course of study to take, in a sense they’re flying blind. “They’re going on anecdotal information,” says
Ross Finnie, a professor in the graduate school of public and international affairs at the University of Ottawa. That’s because there’s very little good data on how students perform in the labour market once they graduate, making it harder to “shop around” for a diploma or degree that will lead to a great job at the end. With a new initiative, Finnie hopes to change that.
Online education has the potential to make higher education more accessible, and it has the ability to overcome the financial, social and geographic barriers faced by some students via their pursuit of a post- secondary education. It also has the potential to enhance student learning, both inside the classroom and within distance education context. However, if implemented in the wrong way, it has the potential to be disengaging, impersonal, and costly. Broken down into sections based on OUSA’s mandate of seeking accessible, affordable, accountable, and quality post-secondary education for all willing students, this paper addresses some of the major concerns that surround fully-online learning, and provides possible solutions for these issues. There is currently a lot of potential for growth in this area, but a lot of questions remain as
well. The following summary presents some of the topics discussed in this paper.
The overall participation rate in postsecondary education among those aged 18 to 20 years in December 1999 increased
steadily from 54% in December 1999 to 79% in December 2005. Looking more specifically at participation rates and status by type of institution attended, attendance at university almost doubled over the six years period from 21% in 1999 to 40% in
2005, while attendance at college / CEGEP went up from 26% in 1999 to 42% in 2005 among the YITS respondents. Growth in attendance at postsecondary institutions slowed between 2003 and 2005 as respondents grew out of the prime
postsecondary education age range.
Objective: Responsible media reporting of youth suicide may reduce the risk of contagion and
increase help-seeking behaviour. Accordingly, we conducted a content analysis of Canadian youth suicide newspaper
articles to assess quality and summarize content (themes, age groups, populations and use of scientific evidence). Method: The Canadian Periodical Index Quarterly (CPI.Q) was searched (2008-2012) for full-text Canadian newspaper articles using the keywords “youth” and “suicide.” The top five most relevant articles as judged by CPI.Q were selected sequentially for each year (n=25). Quality was assessed using World Health Organization (WHO) guidelines for responsible media reporting. Content analysis was completed in duplicate by two reviewers. Results: All articles addressed youth suicide generally rather than reporting exclusively on a specific death by suicide. Alignment of articles with individual WHO guideline items ranged from 16 to 60%. The most common content theme was prevention (80%). No article was judged to glamorize suicide. Help seeking was
addressed in 52% of articles, but only 20% provided information on where to obtain help. Statistics were referenced more frequently than scientific research (76% vs. 28%). Conclusions: Our review suggests that Canadian media presents youth suicide as an issue for which hope and help exist. While the majority of reports aim to educate the public about suicide, increased use of scientific evidence about risk factors and prevention is recommended to facilitate the translation of rigorous scientific knowledge into improved mental health and reduced suicide risk among Canadian youth.
Key Words: suicide, youth, responsible media reporting, Canada
Objectif: Les médias responsables qui rendent compte du suicide chez les adolescents peuvent réduire le risque de
contagion et favoriser le comportement de recherche d’aide. Conformément, nous avons mené une analyse de contenu des articles de journaux canadiens sur le suicide d’adolescents pour en évaluer la qualité et résumer le contenu (thèmes, groupes d’âge, populations et utilisation de données probantes scientifiques). Méthode: Nous avons recherché (2008- 2012) dans l’Index de périodiques canadiens trimestriel (IPC.T) le texte intégral des articles de journaux canadiens à l’aide des mots « adolescent » et « suicide ». Les cinq principaux articles les plus pertinents, selon l’IPC.T, ont été choisis séquentiellement pour chaque année (n=25). La qualité a été évaluée à l’aide des directives de l’Organisation mondiale de la santé (OMS) pour une couverture responsable des médias. L’analyse de contenu a été effectuée en double par deux réviseurs. Résultats: Tous les articles abordaient le suicide chez les adolescents généralement plutôt que decouvrir exclusivement un décès spécifique par suicide. L’alignement des articles contenant des éléments individuels des directives de l’OMS allait de 16 à 60%. Le thème le plus commun était la prévention (80%). Aucun article n’a été jugé sensationnaliser le suicide. La recherche d’aide a été mentionnée
dans 52% des articles, mais seulement 20% donnaient de l’information sur l’endroit où obtenir de l’aide. Les références étaient plus fréquemment de l’ordre des statistiques que de la recherche scientifique (76% c. 28%). Conclusions: Notre revue suggère que les médias canadiens présentent le suicide chez les adolescents comme un enjeu pour lequel il existe de l’espoir et de l’aide. Bien que la majorité des articles visent à éduquer le public sur le suicide, le recours accru à des données probantes scientifiques sur les facteurs de risque et la prévention est recommandé pour faciliter la traduction de connaissances scientifiques rigoureuses en une meilleure santé mentale, et des risques de suicide réduits chez les adolescents canadiens.
Mots clés: suicide, adolescent, couverture responsable des médias, Canada
In recent years, the Higher Education Quality Council of Ontario (HEQCO) has launched several studies that analyze and conceptualize the differentiation of the Ontario postsecondary education system (Weingarten & Deller, 2010; Hicks, Weingarten, Jonker & Liu, 2013; Weingarten, Hicks, Jonker & Liu, 2013). Similarly, in the summer of 2012, the Ontario Ministry of Training, Colleges and Universities (MTCU) initiated several projects to identify ways to drive innovation and improve the productivity of the postsecondary sector.
major new development in education like the community college baccalaureate warrants serious examination and reflection. In this connection, I wish to applaud Dr. Kenneth Walker for his vision and initiative in founding the Community College Baccalaureate Association and in taking the lead to organize this First Annual Conference of the Association. I feel honoured to be speaking at what I believe will turn out to have been such an historic event.
There are many interesting and important lines of inquiry which can be pursued in studying the community college baccalaureate movement, such as identifying factors which have led to this development; articulating the arguments for and against it; implementation issues; and case studies of early initiatives, to name just a few. I note that all of these lines of inquiry and others are represented in the program for this conference. What I would like to do in my remarks is to step back from the immediate issues in the implementation of the community college baccalaureate and reflect on the implications of the community college baccalaureate with respect to (1) the organization of ostsec community college and; (3) the Bachelor's
Degree
Within the span of 20 years, tuition as a source of operating revenue grew from 18 percent in 1988 to 37 percent in 2008.1 The most recent financial reports show tuition alone made up 45 percent of universities’ operating budgets in 2014—51 percent
when fees are included— compared to the provincial government’s 43 percent contribution. 2 As tuition continues to increase the affordability, accessibility, and accountability of a university education is put at risk. Our Tuition policy sets out students’ priorities for addressing their short and long term concerns with regards to the tuition framework and tuition payment processes.
"I feel like I am going crazy and need to run some things by you," said an administrative colleague. When we met, he began to describe a series of unsettling incidents. He wondered: Were they intentionally designed to signal that he was no longer wanted? Aimed at making him and the people in his program feel nervous and disoriented?
Academe has plenty of its own clichés, but one that we’ve eagerly adopted from the business world is "thinking outside the box." You’ll see that phrase again and again in administrative-job postings and in applicants’ cover letters. But what does it really mean in higher education?
More important, however good you are at thinking outside the box, is it possible to act on your outside-the-box ideas once you’re on the job as a chair, dean, provost, or president?
This month the Admin 101 series on-campus leadership explores some of the reasons why leaders encounter resistance in carrying out unconventional proposals, and what you need to know before you jump outside the box.
Whenever a leadership transition is in the works, there is a fair amount of gossip about who will stay and who will go. Will the incoming leader vote everyone off the island and bring in a new team to ensure the loyalty of all lieutenants? Or will there be an effort to retain those who can support a smooth transition from the past to the future?
After witnessing quite a few leadership transitions — both inside and outside of higher education — I've discovered some secrets of the folks who seem to have Herculean staying power. I call them the "protected people."
This study examined aspects of approval processes for baccalaureate degree programs in colleges in the following 11 jurisdictions: Alberta, British Columbia, Austria, Denmark, Finland, Flanders, Florida, Germany, Ireland, the Netherlands, and New Zealand. More detailed profiles are provided for seven of the jurisdictions. In order to make the data more relevant for the Ontario reader, some comparisons with characteristics of the baccalaureate degree approval process in Ontario are noted.
For more than 10 years, the Center for Community College Student Engagement has worked with colleges to answer the most important question in higher education: How can we best restructure policy and practice to help the most students succeed?
The Center—along with Achieving the Dream, the Community College Research Center, Completion by Design, and other efforts—has led the field in understanding and using data to improve practice. Now, findings from more than 10 years of CCSSE survey administrations show an unmistakable trend: consistent, continuous improvement in engagement.
This handbook is intended to serve as a resource for faculty, staff, academic leaders and education developers engaged in program and course design/review, and the assessment of program-level learning outcomes for program improvement. The assessment of learning outcomes at the program-level can assist in making improvements to curricula, teaching and assessments plans.