Ensuring access to postsecondary education (PSE) for all qualified individuals is key to Ontario’s future competitiveness and equally critical from an equity perspective. This paper provides an empirical analysis of access to PSE among a number of under-represented (and minority) groups in Ontario, including comparisons to other regions. Having parents that did not attend PSE is the most important factor across the country, and the effects are even greater in Ontario than in some other regions. Being from a low-income household is considerably less important than parental education, and the income effects are even smaller in Ontario than in certain other regions. Aboriginal and disabled youth are also strongly under-represented groups in PSE in Ontario, driven entirely by their lower university participation rates, offset to different degrees by higher college participation rates . Rural students are also significantly under-represented (though to a lesser degree) in university, but again go to college at somewhat higher rates. Furthermore, for these latter groups, Ontario does not compare favourably to other regions. The children of immigrants are much more likely to go to university but somewhat less likely to attend college almost everywhere. Being from a single parent family has little independent effect on access to PSE, as is also the case for being a Francophone outside of Quebec, the latter effect in some cases actually being positive. Intriguingly, although females generally have significantly higher PSE (especially university) attendance rates than males, females in under-represented groups are generally more disadvantaged than males.
Tioga High School senior Emily Kennedy studies a child development college course online in Groveland, as part of
a collaboration with Columbia College.
Why are writing groups so difficult to sustain? How can they be cultivated and nurtured? We would like to share our
experiences of being a productive and successful writing group over the last seven years. We began with seven
non-tenured and/or contractual members who saw academic writing as an important process for developing research ideas and, consequently, for career growth. We also recognized that it was vital to have a circle of friends where everyone can receive supportive critique and informative feedback on their writing. Over the years, the group has grown to include 17 academics at all ranks and stages.
September 1987 and Blaine Favel was sitting in a lecture hall at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ont., a long way from his home on Poundmaker Cree Nation, northwest of Saskatoon. Already he had an advocate’s leanings honed from growing up in a family of chiefs and protected by the thick skin he’d developed facing racial intolerance in Saskatchewan. So when his professor opened her lecture on property law with the pronouncement that all land in Canada belonged to the Queen, Mr. Favel’s hand shot up. “I asked her, ‘How did the Queen get the land?’”
The question left the rookie professor so flustered that she cancelled the rest of the class to reconsider her curriculum. Some students hissed at Mr. Favel, but he had made his point. When class resumed the next day, the professor began by teaching about aboriginal title.
Disciplinary experts have a responsibility to engage in nuanced thinking about teaching and learning.
Recently, i had a conversation with a colleague that stopped me dead in my tracks. I was in the middle of extolling the virtues of SoTL (the scholarship of teaching and learning) as a research field that is multidisciplinary, accessible and increasingly relevant as we shape what higher education looks like in the 21st century.
Feeling the wonderful effects of a mid-afternoon caffeine rush, I was exclaiming that SoTL has wide appeal for many members of our learning community and provides: 1) support to inform teaching practices; 2) fresh solutions andnew ideas, such as how to jump-start a sluggish class or reach the latest generation of students or harness a new technology; 3) opportunities for cross-fertilization between research and teaching; and 4) the option to develop a secondary research field without costly infrastructure.
Over the past 30 years, higher education has transitioned from an elite endeavour to an open market. The number of post-secondary institutions around the world has increased exponentially, often through the founding of small-scale, private operations.
In such a climate, scholars and critics debate what role, if any, governments should take in founding, funding and regulating these diverse institutions.
As the Canadian situation shows, a set of diverse institutions requires a thoughtful and intentional approach at the systemic level. An emphasis on consumer protection, harmonisation and degree progression is necessary to align such complex post-secondary systems.
Women leaders make a difference in terms of having more female faculty members, at least in the humanities,
according to a new working paper from the Cornell Higher Education Research Institute.
Data “suggest that the gender of an institution’s president is both a large and statistically significant factor increasing the share of women in full-time, tenure-track positions” in the humanities, the paper says. “A single president who remains in office for 10 years could increase the share of full-time tenured and tenure-track faculty that is female by 36 percentage points.”
Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology tasked with examining the future of online
education have
returned with a simple recommendation for colleges and universities: focus on people and process,
not technology.
Back in 2013, an MIT task force presented a vision of undergraduate education at the institute in which students spend half as much time on campus as they do today. Freshman year would be fully online, and instead of a senior year, students would take online continuing education courses to refresh their knowledge and add new skills. That vision leaned heavily on MIT’s work with edX, the massive open online course provider it founded with Harvard University.
CHICAGO -- Community college leaders across the country are looking through the hundreds of courses in their catalogs and trying to find a way to streamline their offerings in order to get students to completion.
That's because the days of students taking courses without direction is no longer acceptable if colleges hope to get them to complete within a reasonable time, with a degree and minimal student debt.
Nearly every college and university in America has refocused its attention on “student success.” Like many institutions, Cleveland State University, where I work, has erected an entire enterprise devoted to this endeavor. We have reorganized ourselves administratively, invested in new staff, updated technology and taken a deep dive into institutional data to ensure we are best positioned to make sure all our students have a high potential to graduate. We have improved as a result.
It's pretty incredible how often you hear managers complaining about their best employees leaving, and they really
do have something to complain about--few things are as costly and disruptive as good people walking out the door.
Managers tend to blame their turnover problems on everything under the sun, while ignoring the crux of the matter: people don't leave jobs; they leave managers.
The sad thing is that this can easily be avoided. All that's required is a new perspective and some extra effort on the
manager's part.
Effective Practices to Enhance the Educational Quality of Structured Work Experiences Offered through Colleges and Universities
The First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution guarantees Americans freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom of assembly, freedom of the press and the right to petition the government without retribution. The ways in which the First Amendment has been interpreted and applied over time have formed the contours of our modern society, determining the types of expression that American institutions and citizens will and will not defend, as well as the role of the press and media in supporting an informed society.
Over the past twenty years the recruitment of international students has become a key priority for many Canadian PSE institutions. Major schools have produced multi-year plans to help make themselves more international, and these plans often give priority to increasing the proportion of international students studying on their campuses. Major figures in higher ed have also warned that the recruitment of international students and the charging of higher tuition fees to this cohort can result in ethical concerns, and have called for enhanced federal guidelines to govern the enrolment of non-Canadian students in Canadian institutions.
A fraternity member from the University of Oklahoma is otaped chanting a racist sont. At the University of Missouri, a slow response to racial slurs and graffiti fueld protests and led to the resignation of top administrators.
“First and last class sessions are the bookends that hold a course together.” I heard or read that somewhere—apologies to the source I can’t acknowledge. It’s a nice way to think about first and last class sessions. In general, teachers probably do better with the first class. There’s the excitement that comes with a new beginning. A colleague said it this way: “Nothing bad has happened yet.” Most of us work hard to make good first impressions. But by the time the last class rolls around, everyone
is tired, everything is due, and the course sputters to an end amid an array of last-minute details. Here are a few ideas that might help us finish the semester with the same energy and focus we mustered for the first class.
here are three basic ways that I hear faculty talk about difficult dialogues—in-class dialogues that were planned ut did not go particularly well; in-class hot moments that were not anticipated and that the faculty member did not eel equipped to handle; and difficult dialogues that happen during office hours or outside of class.
n all three instances, faculty are challenged to use skills they may not have learned at any point in their disciplinary raining. That lack of skill can actually cause them great angst, and in the most extreme situations, cause them to avoid addressing important issues directly.
Presentation courses are becoming more prevalent at Japanese universities. This paper focuses on one small cohort of students (n=5) that took an elective presentation skills course at Nanzan University. The paper initially looks at some of the salient themes related to teaching presentation skills and then outlines the design of the course. The main focus of the paper is on the students’ reflective comments on the course and how it affected their presentation skills. Finally, some example guidelines are offered for teachers who are teaching similar courses.
The Canadian College and University Environmental Network (CCUEN-RCCUE) is an organization established to bring together environmental educators at universities, colleges, CEGEPs, technical institutes, and similar organizations that offer educational programs in any environmental field.
Since the initial meetings of college and university educators in 2002 and 2003 the Canadian College and University Environmental Network (CCUEN) - Réseau Canadien des Collèges et des Universités en Environnement (RCCUE) has aspired to become the primary voice of Canadian college and university environmental educators. One of the core activities is the annual CCUEN1 conference. This conference brings together researchers, employers and educators, students and related associations together to explore a range of issues and challenges for environmental educators.
The Survey of Earned Doctorates, the data source for this report, is an annual census of individuals who receive research doctoral degrees from accredited U.S. academic institutions. The survey is sponsored by six federal agencies: the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, National Endowment for the Humanities, National Institutes of Health, National Science Foundation (NSF), U.S. Department of Agriculture, and U.S. Department of Education. These data are reported in several publications from NSF’s National Center for Science and Engineering Statistics. The most comprehensive and widely cited publication is this report, Doctorate Recipients from U.S. Universities.