Adventures in Canadian Post-Secondary Education

Friday, July 17, 2009

Graduates don't equal growth?

Writing in a Change Magazine article, King’s College London professor Allison Wolf counters the suggestion that post-secondary education "automatically" makes one more skilled, productive, and prosperous. She says:

In summary, education helps people get ahead. In a recession, no one will take much persuading that college is one of the best purchases that they, as individuals, can make. But what college does is put you in there with a chance; a college degree suggests that you may be better positioned than other people competing for the same jobs who don’t have the degree. That is a very different thing from being a way for countries to deliver economic growth overall.

Hat tip to Educational Policy Institute partisan Alex Usher

Enhancing learning with interactive e-feedback

From Inside Higher Ed:

It may seem paradoxical, but educational technology as a supplement to face-to-face learning could personalize the educational experience. That is, at least according to a presentation on student assessment and feedback here at the Blackboard annual conference Thursday. Two professors from the University of Westminster in London explained research finding that use of educational technology such as blogs and online questionnaires, combined with personal tutors, could enhance the feedback loop while also making face-to-face communication more efficient.

Foreign universities must adhere to India's inclusion policy

From The Chronicle on Higher Education:

Foreign universities seeking to set up campuses in India will have to follow the government’s quota policies that reserve almost 50 percent of all seats at higher-education institutions for members of economically disadvantaged castes and classes, Kapil Sibal, the country’s minister in charge of higher education, told parliament on Wednesday, The Times of India reported.

Thursday, July 16, 2009

UK prime minister pledges more university spaces

From the BBC News:

The prime minister has said there will be extra university places for the next academic year, starting this autumn.

Gordon Brown made the promise to a committee of senior MPs - but without putting a figure on the expansion.

He said the universities minister would make an announcement "in a timely manner" after consulting the sector.

Applications are up about 10%, suggesting tens of thousands of people face disappointment, while previous expansion plans have been cut back.

Fifty thousand more people have applied for university places in the UK this year, than last year.

Can community colleges save the U.S. economy?

From Time magazine:

Many politicians and their well-heeled constituents may be under the impression that a community college — as described in a promo for NBC's upcoming comedy Community — is a "loser college for remedial teens, 20-something dropouts, middle-aged divorcées and old people keeping their minds active as they circle the drain of eternity." But there's at least one Ivy Leaguer who is trying to help Americans get past the stereotypes and start thinking about community college not as a dumping ground but as one of the best tools the U.S. has to dig itself out of the current economic hole. His name: Barack Obama.

The President hasn't forgotten about the 30 or so community colleges he visited during the 2008 campaign. These institutions are our nation's trade schools, training 59% of our new nurses as well as cranking out wind-farm technicians and video-game designers — jobs that, despite ballooning unemployment overall, abound for adequately skilled workers. Community-college graduates earn up to 30% more than high school grads, a boon that helps state and local governments reap a 16% return on every dollar they invest in community colleges. But our failure to improve graduation rates at these schools is a big part of the achievement gap between the U.S. and other countries. As unfilled jobs continue to head overseas, Obama points to the "national-security implication" of the widening gap. Closing it, according to an April report from McKinsey & Co., would have added as much as $2.3 trillion, or 16%, to our 2008 GDP.

The higher education access crisis

Syndicated columnist EJ Dionne writes on access to higher education:

Today, the United States stands 10th in the percentage of 25- to-34-year-olds who have earned a postsecondary degree. We're behind Canada, Japan, South Korea, New Zealand, Belgium, Ireland, Norway, Denmark and France.

The information I've just offered comes from an important article by Andrew Delbanco, a professor at Columbia University, published this spring in the New York Review of Books. Delbanco concludes that "a great many gifted and motivated young people are excluded from college for no other reason than their inability to pay, and we have failed seriously to confront the problem."

To bolster his point, Delbanco cites the remarkable finding of Donald E. Heller, the director of Penn State's Center for the Study of Higher Education, that "the college-going rates of the highest-socioeconomic-status students with the lowest achievement levels is the same level as the poorest students with the highest achievement levels." I added the italics to underscore the not-so-hidden injuries of class.

While comparable data are not available, a similar phenomenon exists North of the 49th parallel. Canadian youth from lower income families also have less opportunity to access post-secondary education. University participation rates in particular are highest amongst youth from high-income families and lowest amongst youth from low-income families. In fact, children of those from the highest family income quartile are about twice as likely to enroll in university.

Nearly 1 in 5 university students report recent violent experiences

University of British Columbia media release:

While attending university, men are equally likely as women to have been victims of physical or emotional violence, and that violence is often linked to drinking, according to a new study led by University of British Columbia researcher Elizabeth Saewyc.

The study, first published online in the Journal of Adolescent Health last month and scheduled for print publication this fall, found 17 per cent of men and 16 per cent of women reported emotional or physical violence in the past six months. It’s the first multi-site study covering both the U.S. and Canada that focuses on recent violence while attending university.

Wednesday, July 15, 2009

Students say $50M Olympic deal limits free speech

From CTV News:

The University of British Columbia's Alma Mater Society says a clause intended to protect Olympic sponsors on campus could end up being used unfairly against critics of the 2010 Games.

VANOC has imposed a clause on contracts for students renting housing at UBC against the improper use of sponsoring brands of the 2010 Olympic Games.

The university is home to one of the official venues for the 2010 Games, the $50-million Winter Sports Centre where ice hockey and figure skating will be held.

VANOC says the clause in question is necessary because sponsors paying hundreds of millions of dollars to help build the venues of the 2010 Games are promised that the integrity of their brands will be protected.

UBC's Alma Mater Society is calling the clause a threat to free speech and wants it removed from renting contracts.

Prepared minds, prepared places

In 2007, the Canada Millennium Scholarship Foundation partnered with YMCA Canada to launch the Canadian Post-Secondary Access Partnership. The aim of this partnership is to build the capacity of community organizations to provide information and one-on-one counseling to students and their families regarding post-secondary education opportunities.

With this in mind, the YMCA's You Can Go sites across the county are focusing on providing information and mentoring to help people negotiate paths to post-secondary programs with special attention to underrepresented groups such as First Nations, first-generation students, and low-income families.

This coming October, the partners in this initiative are hosting an inaugural conference in Toronto in collaboration with the European Access Network and the National College Access Network. The conference, themed Prepared Minds, Prepared Places: Post-Secondary Access in the Global Village, will review the role of civil society in widening access to post-secondary education, and will involve community organizations, civic groups, corporations and business groups, post-secondary institutions, grade schools, and governments.

The partnership has issued a call for presentations and workshops which focus on the following themes:

Insights from research and practice in working with first-generation students, youth and adults from Aboriginal communities, lower-income households, and under-represented ethnic groups;
Strategies for mobilizing communities, cities and regions, education systems, higher education institutions, business, community organizations, and other stakeholders, to broaden post secondary access and build human capital;
Early intervention, outreach, recruitment, career development and communication programs designed to attract and prepare youth, their parents, and adult learners for post-secondary studies;
Strategies, programs and practices designed to create a sense of identity and belonging and a culture of success in schools, on post-secondary campuses and in the workplace; and
Best practices in impact assessment, evaluation, and benchmarking of efforts to broaden post-secondary access and corporate diversity; approaches to aligning community, institutional and corporate objectives.

The deadline for submissions is this coming Monday, July 20.

Obama pledges $12B for community colleges

From The Miami Herald:

President Barack Obama on Tuesday touted the nation's community colleges as a key ingredient in his efforts to resuscitate the flailing economy. He called for a $12 billion investment to prepare millions of people for well-paying, 21st century jobs.

Obama's funding commitment, if ultimately approved by Congress, would bring new academic programs, new buildings and a new sense of optimism to America's nearly 1,200 community colleges.

The White House says the $12 billion would be spread over 10 years, and would be paid for by ending wasteful subsidies to banks and private lenders of student loans.

''Time and again, when we have placed our bet for the future on education, we have prospered as a result,'' Obama said.

Tuesday, July 14, 2009

Mexican-Czech visa change will impact students

This article from the Regina Leader-Post raises interesting concerns about how new visa requirements for people coming to Canada from Mexico and the Czech Republic will impact those who planned to enroll as post-secondary students here this fall:

The new visa requirements for people from Mexico coming to Canada has the University of Regina scrambling to find out how that will impact students coming to campus in the fall.

"Right now we are trying to take steps to make sure that our students, who are expected for the fall, are getting the information they need as quickly as possible. But we are not aware of any negative impact yet, I don't know if there will be one,'' said Barb Pollock, the university's vice-president of external relations.

"If some students are not used to having to get visas to go somewhere then of course that is an issue for them. So the potential for effect is far more on the students having to do some process (to obtain visas) rather than us.''

Ontario Ombuds wants career college clampdown: Says ministry incompetence led to "disaster"

Ombudsman Ontario news release:

Ontario Ombudsman André Marin today urged the province’s Ministry of Training, Colleges and Universities to get tougher on unscrupulous private career colleges.

His latest special report, Too Cool For School, outlines the “unmitigated disaster” of Bestech Academy, an unregistered, illegal operation which the Ministry tolerated for more than two years – while actually paying for several students to attend classes there, and subsequently even hiring its president to work in the Ministry.

Bestech “was allowed to line its pockets with public funds while flouting the law,” Mr. Marin notes, adding that the Ministry’s “inattention, indifference and dereliction,” helped enable the college to prey on innocent students. Bestech operated campuses in Stoney Creek and St. Catharines, offering courses in gas technician technology before closing abruptly in October 2008, leaving students and staff out of pocket.

More here and here from The Toronto Star.

Students squeezed

Elizabeth Church at The Globe and Mail picks up on the soaring student unemployment rate this summer and its potential fallout:

Students are coping with the worst summer-job market in more than a decade, leaving many scrambling to find often low-paying jobs. Youth employment rates have tanked since October, falling faster than any other age group. Recent numbers from Statistics Canada offer little hope for improvement. The unemployment rate for students between the ages of 20 and 24 hit 14 per cent in June and rose to 18 per cent for those aged 17 to 19, the highest level since 1998.

The drop in summer earnings, coupled with strained family finances, is expected to leave many students struggling to make ends meet when they return to campus in September. University and student leaders are predicting a rise in demand for student aid, with some schools making financial assistance a top priority for their fundraising efforts and others beefing up the services they offer to help students land jobs.

Post-election hike could triple Oxford's fees

From The Guardian:

Tuition fees at Oxford University are likely to more than treble as early as next year, academics at the 900-year-old institution have warned.

Lecturers have told the Guardian they expect students to be charged £10,000 a year "as soon as the government allows it" – which some believe will be shortly after a general election next year.

Full-time undergraduates starting at Oxford this year will pay £3,225 a year – the maximum universities are allowed to charge.

The university will struggle to compete with the US Ivy League institutions unless government funds increase or Oxford raises its fees, the academics warn. But chances of a growth in public subsidies are remote, they admit.

Monday, July 13, 2009

Canada's university enrollment growth slows

According to new figures from Statistics Canada, the number of students enrolled at Canadian universities in 2007-08 was up by just 0.6 per cent over the previous year. This rate of growth is lower than in previous years. For example, between 2002-03 and 2007-08 the annual average increase in Canadian university enrollment was over 2.5 per cent.

Compared to the year previous, full-time enrollment was down in all four of the Atlantic provinces in 2007-08, with Prince Edward Island reporting the largest contraction (5.8 per cent). The largest increases full-time enrollment were seen in Manitoba (5.3 per cent) and British Columbia (2.7 per cent).

Global post-secondary student union proposed

University World News story:

Student groups from around the world met on the margins of the World Conference on Higher Education with the aim of establishing a global student organisation that could become a powerful lobbying force to advance the student perspective at international education meetings.
. . .

The student groups included the [European Students Union], the All African Students Union, the Asia Pacific Students and Youth Association, the Canadian Federation of Students, the Organisation of Latin American and Caribbean Students, along with students unions from Australia, New Zealand and the US, plus groupings of Catholic students, medical students and students of law.

The groups said that the human right to free association was "too often breached in the higher education sphere". They said the next global meeting of student unions was likely to be in Latin America, probably Mexico, to further build an internationally representative organisation.

[Oludare Ogunlana, Secretary General of the All-African students union,] said a previous global students' union, the International Students Union, had existed since the 1940s with headquarters in Prague but it had been inactive since its last congress in Libya in 2000 because of lack of funding.

It appears that student groups attending the World Conference on Higher Education (WCHE) also endorsed the Global Student Statement on Higher Education developed by student groups at their January WCHE preparatory conference.

Support builds for Obama's student loan plan

From The New York Times:

The president’s proposal, first outlined in his initial budget in February, would save the government roughly $87 billion over 10 years, according to the Congressional Budget Office — money that the White House says should be used to aid impoverished students.

The federal government already makes some loans directly to students, but most federal student loans are handled by private firms even though there is virtually no private capital available for financing the loans. The industry argues that it provides competition and better marketing and servicing of loans.

The administration’s view, shared by a number of Democratic lawmakers, is that the private lenders should no longer be paid by taxpayers to operate a virtually risk-free business in which they essentially use taxpayer dollars to originate loans, with repayment guaranteed, and then resell those loans to the Treasury.

Sunday, July 12, 2009

Growing list of universities won't accept credit cards for tuition payments

Canadian Press story:

Students who are accustomed to the swipe now, pay later approach to tuition payments may have to re-think their finances this fall as more Canadian universities eliminate the option of paying with credit cards.

Universities say they want to trim the transaction fees they pay to financial institutions and most schools are putting the money they save into their operating budgets, while others are directing the savings towards specific projects like bursaries for first-year students.

Friday, July 10, 2009

Student unemployment at highest level since 1997

From Statistics Canada's Labour Force Survey:

Compared with June 2008, employment was down 43,000 for students aged 20 to 24 in June 2009. This pushed their unemployment rate up 4.8 percentage points to 14.0%, the highest June unemployment rate for these students since 1997.

The labour market for 17 to 19 year-old students is also proving to be challenging, as employment was down 50,000 between June of 2008 and 2009. This brings their unemployment rate to 18.1%, the highest since June 1998.

For reaction from national student groups see here and here.

Court strikes down ban on education adverts

From The Globe and Mail:

The Supreme Court of Canada has given the green light to political advertising on the sides of transit vehicles, in an important test of free expression.

In an 8-0 ruling this morning, the court said two B.C. mass transit agencies were wrong to refuse political ads the Canadian Federation of Students and a teachers union attempted to purchase in 2004.

The agencies - the Greater Vancouver Transportation Authority (TransLink) and British Columbia Transit (BC Transit) - rejected the ads based on internal policies that focused on making riders feel comfortable with their surroundings.
. . .

In the summer and fall of 2004, CFS and the British Columbia Teachers' Federation (BCTF), attempted to purchase advertising space on the sides of buses operated by the transit authorities.

The CFS wanted to encourage more young people to vote in a provincial election scheduled for May 17, 2005 by posting advertisements about the election. The first advertisement, which was to run the length of the bus, would have depicted a silhouette of a crowd at a concert, with the words: “Register now. Learn the issues. Vote May 17, 2005. ROCK THE VOTE BC.com.”

The second advertisement would have run along the top of the bus, and read: “Tuition fees ROCK THE VOTE BC.com Minimum wage ROCK THE VOTE BC.com Environment ROCK THE VOTE BC.com.”

Downward pressure on academic standards

Times Higher Education story:

Up to half of the world’s university teachers may lack postgraduate degrees because of the pressures of “massification”.

A report presented to the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation’s (Unesco) 2009 World Conference on Higher Education in Paris this week warns that the “academic profession is under stress as never before”.

“The need to respond to the demands of massification has caused the average qualification for academics in many countries to decline,” says the report, Trends in Global Higher Education: Tracking an Academic Revolution by Philip Altbach, director of the Centre for International Higher Education, Boston College.
. . .

It adds that the number of part-time academics is increasing in many countries. In Latin America, up to 80 per cent of the professoriate are employed part time.

The report also warns that “in terms of accountability and assessment, the professoriate has lost much of its autonomy. The pendulum of authority in higher education has swung from the academics to managers and bureaucrats, with significant impact on the university.”

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