This article examines the differences in the location of study of immigrant adults aged 25 to 64 with a university education (i.e., with at least a bachelor’s degree). It provides results by period of immigration (pre-1990, the 1990s, and the 2000s) and provides a more in-depth analysis of factors that are linked to the location of study for the most recent cohort of immigrants (i.e., those who immigrated in 2000 or later).
This article examines the share of adults aged 25 to 65 with a university degree who were in the lower range for literacy skills, numeracy skills, or both, and the factors most likely to be associated with lower levels of literacy or numeracy among university graduates. In this article, individuals in the lower range for literacy and numeracy are defined as those who scored at level 2 or below (out of 5 levels) in tests administered to survey respondents who participated in the Programme for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIAAC).
Between 1991 and 2011, the share of young people with a university degree increased significantly, as did the share of young workers employed in professional occupations. Nevertheless, many young university degree holders could still be considered ‘overqualified’—working in occupations requiring lower levels of education. In this article, changes in the overqualification among young graduates are examined over the period from 1991 to 2011.
Women represent the majority of young university graduates, but are still underrepresented in science, technology, engineering, mathematics and computer science (STEM) fields. This article provides more information on women with STEM university degrees, and examines whether mathematical ability in high school is related to gender differences in STEM university programs.
In recent years, there has been much discussion and a great deal written about the economic and social well‑being of young people. Are they encountering more problems today than in the past? Are some doing better than others? This article paints their socioeconomic portrait and looks at where they are in the labour market in terms of unemployment and certain work conditions.
In 2009, a 50-year-old worker could expect to continue working for an average of 16 more years, which means retiring at the age of 66. In the late 1990s, expected working life at age 50 was 13 years. Workers have therefore increasingly been delaying their retirement. These findings from a previous study are analyzed at greater length in this article, as are the unexpected personal and economic factors that push some workers to retire early. When such ‘involuntary’ retirements are taken into account, are workers still more likely to retire later than in the late 1990s?
In Germany, strong public and private investments in apprenticeship training have created a well-coordinated and functional apprenticeship system. Its success renders the German apprenticeship system a model that other countries look to for ideas and inspiration. Nevertheless, German governments, businesses, employee groups, researchers, and other stakeholders continue to seek ways to improve the system.
The key mechanism for apprenticeship reform in Germany is the Board of the Federal institute for Vocational Education and training (BiBB). the Board coordinates negotiations among employers, employee groups, the 16 federal states, and the federal government, who work toward a legally mandated consensus on new or revised apprenticeship legislation.
Context: Generalization is a critical concept in all research designed to generate knowledge that applies to all elements of a unit (population) while studying only a subset of these elements (sample). Commonly applied criteria for generalizing focus on experimental design or representativeness of samples of the population of units. The criteria tend to neglect population diversity and targeted uses of knowledge generated from the generalization. Objectives: This article has two connected purposes: (a) to articulate the structure and discuss limitations of different forms of generalizations across the spectrum of quantitative and qualitative research and (b) to argue for considering population heterogeneity and future uses of knowledge claims when judging the appropriateness of generalizations. Research Design: In the first part of the paper, we present two forms of generalization that rely on statistical analysis of between-group variation: analytic and probabilistic generalization. We then describe a third form of generalization: essentialist generalization. Essentialist generalization moves from the particular to the general in small sample studies. We discuss limitations of each kind of generalization. In the second part of the paper, we propose two additional criteria when evaluating the validity of evidence based on generalizations from education research: population heterogeneity and future use of knowledge claims.
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 defi nition of “world” is determined locally when conceptually it should be defi ned 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.
Mergers have been a frequent phenomenon in higher education in the last quarter century. The conventional wisdom is that mergers are undertaken mainly for economic reasons, either to expand markets or to reduce costs. About four out of five college or university mergers survive. In the for-profit sector the comparable rate is closer to two out of five. From this one might conclude that the future for mergers among colleges and universities is robust. If, however, the principal purpose of mergers is economic efficiency, there logically ought to be a point beyond which the efficacy of merger will begin to decline. There is, however, another motive for merger, which is unrelated to economic efficiency. Mergers can produce greater diversity of programs and services, both among individual colleges and universities and within systems of postsecondary education.
The paper presents a discussion of faculty development in 22 of Ontario's Colleges of Applied Arts and Technology. We report the findings of a survey which collected information on administrative structure, funding, mandate, faculty development activities, publication, incentives for faculty participation, assessment of faculty needs and evaluation. We conclude by raising a number of questions which faculty developers might address as changes in the social, political and economic environment present new challenges to colleges and universities.
This paper reports the results of a study of provincial level arrangements for coordination of planning and operations between university and college sectors in Canada. The data are drawn from a survey of senior government and sector officials in which respondents were asked to describe existing arrangements for coordination and to comment upon the importance attached to, and priority issues for, coordination; characteristics of effective structures for coordination; and their satisfaction with existing arrangements. The findings indicate that inter-sector coordination is perceived as an important issue; that coordination structures are most developed in the provinces in which there is the strongest mandate for articulation between sectors; and that efforts are under way in most provinces to refine and improve structures for inter-sector coordination.
Arguably, the greatest barrier to the academic development and functioning of Ontario's twenty-two Colleges of Applied Arts and Technology (CAATs) is the hostile and suspicion laden relationship which exists between management and the union which represents the academic staff of the CAATs - the Ontario Public Service Employees Union (OPSEU). This was the conclusion of the commission on workload in the CAATs which I chaired in 1985 (IARC, 1985) and was corroborated in a study of CAAT governance by a Special Adviser to the Minister of Colleges and Universities the following year (Pitman, 1986). An indication of the degree of concern felt by the Ontario Government regarding managementunion relations in the CAATs is that the largest (in terms of time and resources) public commission on the CAATs to date has been the Colleges Collective Bargaining Commission (Gandz, 1988).
Canadian higher education has in the past few years succumbed to a mood of despair and defensiveness. Until just a few years ago, it was characterized by a confident, forward-looking energy, secure in the notion that it was the preeminent engine of national development. Since then, we have seen our relative salaries decline; our plant, equipment, and libraries erode; our jobs threatened; and the value of our contribution to Canadian society severely questioned. A number of explanations could be given for this dramatic reversal of our fortunes, with emphasis ranging from demographics to poor public relations, from economic stagnation to short-sighted political manoeuvering. One popular explanation is that Canadian higher education is now (justly) paying off debts it incurred in a Faustian compact with homo economicus. We financed our tremendous growth of yesteryear, this explanation purports, on promises of contributing substantially (or worse, by ourselves, delivering) unprecedented economic growth and industrial expansion. Now that industrial expansion has come to a standstill (and even declined), the primary case for generous funding of higher education is at best called into question, and at worst severely undermined.
A PhD is a prerequisite for an academic career, but fewer than 20 per cent of Canada’s PhDs are employed as full-time university professors. The majority of PhDs are employed in a wide range of rewarding careers outside academia. This report examines the employment opportunities and outcomes of PhD holders. It characterizes the challenges some PhD graduates face when transitioning to careers beyond academia, as well as the state of demand for PhDs among Canada’s employers. The valuable contributions PhDs make in a wide range of careers are highlighted. The report examines the status of professional skills development for PhD students and presents innovative examples of professional development initiatives in Canada and peer countries.
LEESA WHEELAHAN
This contribution to the symposium on Michael Young’s article ‘Overcoming the crisis in curriculum theory: a knowledge based approach’, supports his contention that curricu- lum theory has lost sight of its object—‘what is taught and learned in schools’, and argues that this has particularly deleterious consequences for vocational education and training (VET). VET is
unproblematically positioned as applied, experiential and work- focused learning, and it is seen as a solution for those who are alienated from or unsuc- cessful in more traditional forms of academic education. This article argues that rather than being a mechanism for social inclusion, VET is instead a key way in which social inequality is mediated and reproduced because it excludes students from accessing the theoretical knowledge they need to participate in debates and controversies in society and in their occupational field of practice. It presents a social realist analysis to argue why VET students need access to theoretical knowledge, how a focus on experiential and applied learning constitutes a mechanism for social exclusion and what a ‘knowledge rich’ VET curriculum would look like.
Keywords: vocational education and training; social realism; applied
disciplinary knowledge; curriculum; knowledge
ABSTRACT
Community college systems were established across North America from the early 1960s through the early 1970s. The new systems had two principal models: in one model, the college combined lower-division, university-level general education with technical education programs; in the other, most or all of the colleges were intended to concentrate on technical education. Ontario was the largest of the provinces and states in North America that opted for the second model. Many of the issues that planners confronted when designing these college systems have either persisted or re-emerged in recent years. This article re-examines the debate on the design of Ontario’s colleges that took place when they were founded and considers its implications for the present.
RÉSUMÉ
Depuis le début des années 1960 et jusqu’au début des années 1970, lorsqu’on créait des réseaux de collèges communautaires partout en Amérique du Nord, deux modèles majeurs étaient proposés pour ces nouveaux réseaux. Dans un des modèles, le collège combinait l’enseignement général universitaire de division inférieure avec les programmes d’enseignement technique ; dans l’autre, la plupart des collèges, sinon tous, se concentraient sur l’enseignement technique. L’Ontario était la plus importante parmi les provinces et les États en Amérique du Nord qui ait opté pour le deuxième modèle. Beaucoup des défi s auxquels les planifi cateurs ont été confrontés lorsqu’ils ont conçu le réseau des collèges sont encore présents ou sont réapparus au cours des dernières années. Cet article réexamine l’ancien débat sur la conception des collèges de l’Ontario et considère ses implications actuelles.
The promotion of mental health and well-being in our students, faculty, and staff is important to the University of Calgary. Given the symbiotic relation between health and education, Universities are increasingly recognized as places to promote the health and well-being of the people who learn, work and live within them. Research-intensive universities create cultures that demand high performance while promoting excellence and achievement, and also carry the risk of stress, stigma, and challenges to mental health. With the recognition of the importance of promoting mental health and intervening to address illness in a timely way, we join groups across Canada and beyond that are committed to enhancing the mental health of university students, faculty, and staff.
This paper deals with the problematic nature of the transition between education and the workplace. A smooth transition between education and the workplace requires learners to develop an integrated knowledge base, but this is problematic as most educational programmes offer knowledge and experiences in a fragmented manner, scattered over a variety of subjects, modules and (work) experiences. To overcome this problem, we propose a design approach and shifting the educational focus of attention from individual learners to learning environments. The broader notion of learning environments facilitates transitions by establishing horizontal connections between schools and the workplace. The main argument of this paper is that combining or connecting aspects of school-based settings only is not sufficient to ensure learners will develop an integrated knowledge base. The concept and examples of “hybrid learning environment” show how formal, school-based learning and workplace experiences can be closely connected. The paper offers a framework of four coherent perspectives that can help to understand the complex nature of such environments and to design hybrid learning environments: the “agency perspective”, the “spatial perspective”, the “temporal perspective”, and the “instrumental perspective”. The framework is applied to three cases taken from vocational education in the Netherlands to describe what hybrid learning environments look like in contemporary educational practice.
ABSTRACT
This working paper seeks to explore the reasons why educational attainment in the immigrant population varies between North America and Europe. Specifically, the examples of Canada and Switzerland are used as Canada has an immigrant population with a typically higher rate of post-secondary education than that of the domestic population, while in Switzerland the opposite is true. Analysis shows that while differences in immigration policy play a significant role, there are many other variables which affect educational attainment in immigrants, such as the education level of the parents, source region and home language.
RÉSUMÉ
Le présent document de travail tente d‟explorer les raisons pour lesquelles le niveau de formation de la population immigrée varie entre l‟Amérique du Nord et l‟Europe. Il s‟attache plus particulièrement aux exemples du Canada et de la Suisse, les diplômés de l‟enseignement post-secondaire étant typiquement plus nombreux dans la population immigrée que dans la population autochtone au Canada, tandis qu‟en Suisse, c‟est l‟inverse qui s‟observe. L‟analyse montre que si les différences en termes de politiques d‟immigration jouent un rôle important, il existe également de nombreuses autres variables qui influent sur le niveau de formation de la population immigrée, telles que le niveau de formation des parents, la région d‟origine et la langue parlée à la maison.