Adventures in Canadian Post-Secondary Education: May 2009

Sunday, 31 May, 2009

Canada's debt-laden graduates

Statistics Canada reports about 27 per cent of 2005 graduates with bachelor's degrees still owed an average of $16,200 in government loans two years after they graduated in 2005. Another 15 per cent owed an average of $31,600 in government and other loans.

Fully 43 per cent of those owing more than $25,000 reported having difficulty paying their loans, although fewer than 11 per cent were unemployed in 2007.

Ottawa has announced it will begin to phase out interest and other debt relief options for borrowers under the Canada Student Loans Program beginning Aug. 1. They will be replaced by a new program known as the repayment assistance plan or RAP.

Payments will be geared to income, with a limit of 13.3 per cent of a borrower's monthly gross income for federal loans and 20 per cent in provinces where governments adopt the RAP for their loans. No payments on federal loans will be required for those individuals with a gross annual income of $20,000 or less. For those required to make only partial payments, Ottawa will pay the remainder to ensure payments can cease after 15 years or 10 years for persons with permanent disabilities.

Friday, 29 May, 2009

As I noted last week, I gave three presentations at the 2009 Canadian Congress of the Humanities and Social Sciences. As promised, I have uploaded the presentation slides for these (in .pdf format) so that those who are interested may have a closer look:

Academic Blogs: Connecting People and Ideas (from the Congress Career Corner panel on academic blogging)

“We Want to Graduate!”: Students’ Perspectives on What They Need to Succeed (presented with my colleague Dr. Morgan Gardner at the Canadian Society for the Study of Education annual conference)

Non-Formal Adult Learning Programs at Canadian Post-Secondary Institutions: Trends, Issues and Practices (presented with my colleague Dr. Vernon Curran at the Canadian Society for the Study of Higher Education annual conference)

Abstracted: Does the Level of Tuition Fees Affect Student Retention and Graduation?

At the annual conference of the Canadian Society for the Study of Higher Education in Ottawa earlier this week, OISE/UT professor Dr. Dan Lang, who was my doctoral supervisor, presented a thought-provoking paper entitled Does the Level of Tuition Fees Affect Student Retention and Graduation? Here's the abstract for the paper:

Conventional wisdom is that the cost of attendance and the availability of financial assistance are determining factors in the determination of student persistence, and further that the price-response equation is elastic. That is, as cost is lowered or as financial aid is increased, persistence will rise, and vice versa. There is, however, very little direct evidence that tests this proposition. Most research conflates questions about the effects of tuition fees on initial access with questions the effects of tuition fees on retention and graduation. Close examination of the existing research, however, shows that the two phenomena are fundamentally different, and that evidence about one cannot be applied to the other. This study examines the effects of tuition fees on the retention and graduation rates of nearly 7,000 thousand students in two ways in several different cohorts and programs at the University of Toronto. The study also examines the timing of withdrawal of college and university need-based financial aid recipients in colleges and universities. The results show no evidence that the level of tuition fees affects rates of retention and graduation. Rates of retention and graduation for students who receive financial aid and those who do not were virtually the same in all cohorts and all programs.

Reference: Lang, D., Chan, H-S., & Pask-Aube, C. (2009, May). Does the level of tuition fees affect student retention and graduation? Paper presented at the Annual Conference of the Canadian Society for the Study of Higher Education, Ottawa, ON.

Think tank recalls plagiarized copyright reports

Score one for Michael Geist and Canada's fair copyright movement:

One of Canada's most respected research organizations has a black eye after being forced to withdraw three reports on copyright and intellectual property because they contained plagiarized information from a study by a U.S. lobby group for the entertainment industry.

The Conference Board of Canada said it recalled the reports Thursday after an internal investigation showed that they relied too heavily on – and included entire paragraphs lifted from – a document produced by the International Intellectual Property Alliance (IIPA).

Thursday, 28 May, 2009

Ottawa misuses term 'grace period': Loans activist

From The Canadian Press:

The term "grace period" as it applies to student loans is misleading and confusing and should be scrapped, an advocate for the rights of borrowers said Thursday after filing a formal complaint against Human Resources and Skills Development Canada.

The term has come to mean two different things depending on which federal policy is looked at, argues Mark O'Meara of Canadastudentdebt.ca.

According to new credit card rules adopted by Ottawa this month, "grace period" means banks can't charge interest on new purchases for 21 days.

But O'Meara has been fighting with the Human Resources Department for months over its use of the term as people with student loans are still on the hook for interest during the six-month "grace period."

Canada’s score on annual learning index drops

From the Canadian Council on Learning:

For the first time Canada’s overall score on the Composite Learning Index has declined, according to the latest results from the Canadian Council on Learning’s annual measure of lifelong learning.

The national average for 2009 is 75; a drop of two points from last year's score of 77.

Wednesday, 27 May, 2009

Science persuades, it does not compel

Canadian Nobel laureate John Polanyi on the scientific method:

We seek visible and continuing progress toward a new order, not utopia. We have had enough utopias, each more awful than the last. All have been based on a false notion of the incontrovertible nature of scientific proof – a misunderstanding that provided a perfect ground for tyranny. In fact, science persuades, it does not compel.

A paradox lies at the base of the gleaming edifice of science. Science's greatest gift to civilization is its acknowledgment of fallibility. Those of us who do science know full well that there are no final answers. There is only a creeping progress out of darkness into light. For the great enterprise of science, for all its amazing power, is profoundly human.

Monday, 25 May, 2009

Bill Ayers asks "the right question"

Today, I attended University of Illinois professor Dr. Bill Ayers' lecture during the proceedings of the annual Canadian Congress of the Humanities and Social Sciences at Carleton University. Of course, Ayers appeared by video conference as he was prevented from delivering his lecture in person (for undisclosed reasons) by the Canada Border Services Agency.

In his talk, Dr. Ayers spoke of the need for equal and equitable access to public education in a democratic society. Noting the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights, he observed, to an agreeable audience, that the education available to the most privileged of us is a good standard for the education that the rest of society deserves.

One of his more memorable comments was in response to a member of the audience regarding "where to start" in changing the state of affairs in education. He said something to the effect that "when you light a candle in the darkest of places it challenges the darkness everywhere".

After learning that he would not be able to enter Canada due to the unenlightened policies of the Canadian government, Dr. Ayers wrote the following in a letter to the Ottawa Citizen:

And so I return to wonder about the decision of the government to exclude me from your public square, an essential and necessary space in any robust and free society. I don't feel personally offended, nor particularly aggrieved. But Canadians who assume that they live in an open society and a healthy democracy have some cause to worry. I am a political radical, it's true, and a lifelong educator. But I'm not the least bit radioactive. I was made unwittingly and unwillingly an issue in the recent U.S. presidential campaign, and that unwanted celebrity is likely the real reason I'm being excluded from full participation in the conference.

The fallout from any of this will affect me only marginally. The primary job of intellectuals and scholars is to challenge orthodoxy, dogma, and mindless complacency, to be skeptical of all authoritative claims, to interrogate and trouble the given and the taken-for-granted, and I will certainly stay at it. The growth of knowledge, insight, and understanding depends on that kind of effort, and the inevitable clash of ideas that follows must be nourished and not crushed.

The victims of this kind of nonsense are the high-school history teacher on the west side of Chicago or in central Manitoba, the English literature teacher in Detroit, or the math teacher in an Ottawa middle school. They and countless others immediately get the message: be careful what you say; stay close to the official story; stick to the authorized text; keep quiet with your head down.

In Brecht's play Galileo the great astronomer sets forth into a world dominated by a mighty church and an authoritarian power: "The cities are narrow and so are the brains," he declares recklessly. Intoxicated with his own insights, Galileo finds himself propelled toward revolution. Not only did his radical discoveries about the movement of the stars free them from the "crystal vault" that received truth insistently claimed fastened them to the sky, but his insights suggested something even more dangerous: that we, too, are embarked on a great voyage, that we are free and without the easy support that dogma provides.

Here Galileo raised the stakes and risked taking on the establishment in the realm of its own authority, and it struck back fiercely. Forced to renounce his life's work under the exquisite pressure of the Inquisition, he denounced what he knew to be true, and was welcomed back into the church and the ranks of the faithful, but exiled from humanity -- by his own word. A former student confronted him in the street then: "Many on all sides followed you ... believing that you stood, not only for a particular view of the movement of the stars, but even more for the liberty of teaching -- in all fields. Not then for any particular thoughts, but for the right to think at all. Which is in dispute."

While there is no Galileo in the current dispute, this is surely what all the nonsense of demonizing, and now excluding, me finally comes down to: the right to a mind of one's own, the right to pursue an argument into uncharted spaces, the right to challenge the state or the church and its orthodoxy in the public square. The right to think at all.

Labour market panel highlights data problems

From The Globe and Mail:

The way Canada collects and shares labour information is so inefficient it threatens to deepen the recession's pain and could stymie any robust recovery, according to a new study.

Governments have a spotty record of sharing labour information, and the details released to the public are often out of date, incomplete, and too expensive for many small businesses to purchase, the study states. Canada doesn't even know how many people are graduating from postsecondary schools, what skills they have or where they live, it adds.

“We were struck by the fact that even relatively straightforward educational data on colleges and degree-granting institutions, as well as data on workplace skills use, are unavailable or years out of date,” says the 226-page report from a special advisory panel headed by Toronto-Dominion Bank chief economist Don Drummond.

Sunday, 24 May, 2009

PhD offers little salary difference in Canada

From University World News:

Earning a PhD does little to boost earnings compared with those who graduate with just a masters degree, according to a national survey. Canada's student lobby pinned the blame for the relatively low earning power of the PhD on what they see as the casualisation of the university labour force.

Statistics Canada's 2007 National Graduates Survey found that, two years after leaving university, those with a doctorate earned on average C$65,000 (US$55,283) a year, only $5,000 more than the $60,000 earned by those with a master's degree. The gap between the two degrees barely widened since the last version of the survey, which takes the pulse of recent graduates every half-decade: the earlier salary difference was $4,605, just $395 less than five years later.

The survey also revealed that PhDs finished their studies with higher debt loads, reporting a 7% jump since the 2000 cohort of PhD graduates who had said they had difficulty repaying their student loans. The average debt for the 70% of 2005 graduates who still owed loans two years after earning their doctorates was $22,500.

Saturday, 23 May, 2009

U.S. universities consider 3-year degrees

From The Washington Post:

In an era when college students commonly take longer than four years to get a bachelor's degree, some U.S. schools are looking anew at an old idea: slicing a year off their undergraduate programs to save families time and money.

Advocates of a three-year undergraduate degree say it would work well for ambitious students who know what they want to study. Such a program could provide the course requirements for a major and some general courses that have long been the hallmark of American education.

NS NDP promises graduate tax rebate

With recent polls showing them in the lead, the New Democrats could very well form the next government in Nova Scotia.

One of the key planks in the party's platform is a Graduate Retention Rebate which would provide a provincial income tax deduction of up to $15,000 for university graduates and up to $7,500 for community college graduates over a six-year period. This basically constitutes an expansion of the existing Nova Scotia Graduate Tax Credit, which provides post-secondary graduates with an income tax rebate of $2,000.

The effectiveness, equity and efficiency of these provincial tax credit programs is questionable (Manitoba, New Brunswick and Saskatchewan have similar programs). One obvious inequity is that those who leave the province to live and work elsewhere receive no subsidy. As well, graduates who earn more, and pay more tax, stand to gain more than others in the short term. These rebates also do little to assist those who are unable to overcome the barriers to entering and completing a post-secondary program.

Provincial tax credit programs are not particularly efficient as they provide a subsidy to individuals who a) would have stayed and worked in the province in the absence of any subsidy and b) would have stayed and worked in the province for less of a subsidy.

Canada not using potential for e-learning: CCL

From The Calgary Herald:

Canada lags behind other countries when it comes to harnessing the potential of e-learning.

According to a report released in Ottawa this week by the Canadian Council on Learning, the United States, Australia and the United Kingdom have all adopted e-learning — the application of technologies such as computers and the Internet to education and training — at a quicker pace than Canada.

And that means this country may soon lack an international learning edge, some observers say.

Friday, 22 May, 2009

Conference time at CarletonU

The annual Canadian Congress of the Humanities and Social Sciences, which Dr. Noreen Golfman once referred to as "summer camp for intellectuals", is currently getting underway at Carleton University in Ottawa. The Congress runs until May 31 and brings together academics from over 70 scholarly associations.

I try to attend this event every second year. This year I am presenting papers at the annual conferences of the Canadian Society for the Study of Education (with my colleague Dr. Morgan Gardner) and the Canadian Society for the Study of Higher Education (with my colleague Dr. Vernon Curran). I am also chairing a panel on academic blogging for the Congress Career Corner which will include Dr. Michael Barbour, Carolyn Steele, and my colleague Prof. Mary Cameron.

A couple of other notable events on the Congress agenda:

University of Illinois education professor William Ayers was scheduled to give a lecture on Monday, but he has been denied entry to Canada (for no apparent reason) for the second time this year. He may deliver his lecture, titled Bridges and Borders: Democratic Education in a Time of Crisis, by video conference.

On Wednesday, the Society for Socialist Studies and the Canadian Association of Studies in International Development are hosting a panel discussion titled Palestine Solidarity on Campus: The Question of Boycott.

Positive effects of university rankings

Following a series of interviews and focus groups with senior administrators, faculty, staff, and students at universities in Australia, Canada, Germany, and Japan, the Washington-based Institute for Higher Education Policy has concluded that institutional rankings can have positive effects. These include:

Improved data-based decision making -- Rankings can prompt institutional discussions about what constitutes success and how the institution can better document and report that success.

Increased participation in broader discussions about measuring institutional success -- Rankings can encourage institutions to move beyond their internal conversations to participate in broader national and international discussions about new ways of capturing and reporting indicators of success.

Improved teaching and learning practices -- While the case study institutions continue to point to their changing practices that alter input indicators—increasing selectivity, favoring research over teaching, and strengthening the faculty profile—a number of institutions are also reporting changes to practices directly related to student learning and success.

Identification and replication of model programs -- Institutions should be open to using rankings to identify and share best practices.

The full text of the report, Impact of College Rankings on Institutional Decision Making: Four Country Case Studies, may be downloaded here in .pdf format.

Thursday, 21 May, 2009

Barriers to pursuing post-secondary education

A recently released report from the Council of Ministers of Education, Canada and the Canada Millennium Scholarship Foundation notes that limited access to information about post-secondary education in secondary school is a significant obstacle to accessing post-secondary education after high school graduation.

The findings of the study, which involved a series of focus groups with students and parents in six cities across Canada, suggest that information about post-secondary education should be provided to students alongside career information. This would help students to better understand how education is linked to particular careers.

The report also says that finances play only a minor role in decisions not to pursue post-secondary education, however, it also notes that the students and parents who participated in the study were largely unaware of the costs of post-secondary education, and few had seriously considered the costs involved or sought out information about student loans.

The full report may be downloaded here in .pdf format.

UToronto adopts flat fee tuition model

From The Toronto Star:

Special rate, only at the University of Toronto! Three courses for the price of five, starting in 2011.

Despite calls of "Shame" from several dozen students, Canada's largest university approved a plan to charge new students in its downtown arts and science faculty for five courses even if they take only three, starting in September 2011.

The university's Governing Council agreed last night to start phasing in the flat fee this fall by charging new arts and science students on the St. George campus for five courses even if they take four, a rate that will hold until the fall of 2011.

The move is meant to encourage students to take more courses at one time – it also will apply to those taking six courses – to generate $8 million to $14 million a year more in funding from a government that pays universities for each course taught, rather than each student.

Wednesday, 20 May, 2009

Talking trades

I attended the Newfoundland and Labrador government's Skills Task Force Update Forum this morning. The forum, attended by 100 or more stakeholders, was held to review provincial skilled trades training initiatives put in place since the release of the 2007 Skills Task Force report.

The forum also featured presentations from industry leaders involved in past and planned mega-projects including Nalcor Energy (Lower Churchill hydroelectric generation project), Vale Inco (Long Harbour minerals processing plant), and Husky Energy (White Rose oil field project).

I video-recorded some of the talks at the forum and will add these to my YouTube account before long.

Also on the topic of skilled trades training, the current edition of Ontario's College Voice is headlined with a piece on apprenticeship reform. From that piece:

Creating a thriving apprenticeship training program will be important to the recovery and future growth of our economy, says a new report from Ontario’s Workforce Shortage Coalition.

The report, Workforce Requirements: Recession and Recovery, calls on the
Ontario government to protect apprenticeship training during the recession and commit to doubling the number of people who successfully complete apprenticeship programs by 2020.

Tuesday, 19 May, 2009

PhDs living below the poverty line

I suspect we have our fair share of this in Canada too:

In the last quarter of 2008, a significant group of Australians was living below the poverty line. For a single person, this meant living on less than A$415.06 (US$311) a week. These people were working full-time 40 hours a week, and probably much more. They received no employer superannuation and weren't entitled to concessions or pensions.

Who were they? Illegal migrant workers? Sweatshop employees unaware of their rights? No - they were some of Australia's best and brightest minds: PhD students.

UK student press under strain

The mainstream media industry in Canada has been challenged by the on-going economic slowdown. In the UK, even student newspapers seem to be ailing. From the Leeds Student Newspaper:

Financial problems threaten the future of student newspapers around the country, a survey carried out by Leeds Student has revealed.

Over 45 per cent have had to cut their print run or cancel entire issues at least once in the last year, with the majority - over 60 per cent - failing to meet their advertising target; instead finding themselves “often short” of the money required.

Monday, 18 May, 2009

Increase in U.S. students at Canadian universities

From The Globe and Mail:

At a time when many U.S families are finding they have fewer dollars than they expected to spend on higher education, the price of a Canadian undergraduate degree is looking attractive.

That feeling is being fuelled by increased marketing from the Canadian government and more interest by Canadian schools, drawn to the American market as a way to maintain enrolment, attract more tuition dollars and give their campus a more international outlook.

Signs of that push are showing up this spring. Many schools say their U.S. applications are up, and so is the number of students saying yes to offers.

Friday, 15 May, 2009

Salaries of Canadian university professors

From The Chronicle of Higher Education:

Full-time Canadian professors earn, on average, $86,000 to $132,000 in U.S. dollars, according to a preliminary report on faculty salaries issued today by Statistics Canada.

The data in the report represent a snapshot of salaries on October 1, 2008. The report says: “It should be noted that many factors can influence salaries, including qualifications and number of years teaching. As well, some universities impose a maximum to the salary range for each rank while others have an open-ended scale.”

The highest-paid professors, according to the report, are at the University of British Columbia, and the lowest are at Cape Breton University.

New Newfoundland and Labrador R&D agency

The Newfoundland and Labrador government officially launched a Research and Development Corporation (RDC) on Wednesday.

The RDC has a mandate to strengthen the quantity, quality, focus and relevance of research and development for the long-term economic benefit of the province.

The new Crown corporation, which was allocated $25 million for this year, will be overseen by former Rhodes Scholar Glen Janes who holds graduate degrees environmental change and business administration.

Thursday, 14 May, 2009

Postcards from the edge

Joining the ever lengthening list of academic bloggers in Canada, Memorial University's dean of graduate studies, Dr. Noreen Golfman, has launched a new blog titled Postcards from the edge.

Return on investment in university education

A report from the conservative C.D. Howe Institute provides further evidence that women with undergraduate degrees tend to realize larger financial returns than do men who complete undergraduate degrees.

Citing research carried out at the Université de Montréal, the report concludes that women stand to gain 14 cents per dollar (after tax earnings) on their investment in university education compared to 12 cents on the dollar for men.

Women gain the largest private individual rates of return on undergraduate degrees in commerce (19.3 per cent) and health sciences (17.7 per cent). For men, the rates of return are highest for degrees in health sciences (18.1 per cent) and Social Sciences (10.8 per cent).

The report notes that, while the returns are not universally high for all fields of study, these rates of return are significantly higher than returns on other forms of long-term investment.

Educational attainment of Aboriginal Canadians

A recently released article from Statistics Canada highlights the education levels of Aboriginal Canadians.

Drawing on data from the 2006 Census, the article notes that 42 per cent of Aboriginal people aged 25 to 64 had completed a post-secondary education compared to 61 per cent in the non-Aboriginal population. In comparison to men, Aboriginal women were more likely to have completed a post-secondary program – 44% for women versus 39% for men.

The numbers of Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal people with a skilled trades certification was roughly the same at 12 and 13 per cent respectively. However, Aboriginal Canadians were much less likely to have a university degree or a college diploma. A total of 23 per cent of non-Aboriginal people held a university degree, compared to just 7 per cent of Aboriginal people. The gap was narrower for college credentials – 20 percent for non-Aboriginal people versus 17 per cent for Aboriginal people.

There was a relatively large disparity between the educational attainment levels of those living on- and off-reserve. Forty-six per cent of Aboriginal Canadians living off reserve had completed a post-secondary program compared to 35 per cent of those living on reserve.

Wednesday, 13 May, 2009

USask turns down $500,000 in scholarship funding

The University of Saskatchewan has turned down a $500,000 endowment from an alumnus who requested the money be awarded to "non-aboriginal students" only.

The university said the race-based bursary proposal would violate university policy and provincial human rights law.

Story here from the 'National' Post.

Ontario to establish College of Trades

The Ontario government has announced that it is introducing legislation to establish a College of Trades, a new regulatory agency which will oversee the province's apprenticeship and skilled trades system.

The release from the Ministry of Training, Colleges and Universities says that the college will "give industry a greater role in recruitment, governance, certification and apprenticeship training" and "put skilled trades on a similar footing with teachers, doctors and nurses, who have their own professional regulatory colleges".

NB premier's honorary degree sparks backlash

The University of New Brunswick has granted an honorary degree to every New Brunswick premier since 1925, but the university’s decision to bestow the honour on the current premier, Shawn Graham, has some in the province’s university community up in arms.

One hundred or so faculty and staff at the University of New Brunswick have signed a letter protesting Graham’s honorary degree. The letter’s signatories are still upset over the recommendations of a controversial 2007 report on post-secondary education commissioned by the Graham government.

The report, drafted by the Miner-L’Écuyer Commission on Post-Secondary Education in New Brunswick, contained a number of contentious recommendations including the proposal to create "Saint John Polytechnic" through a merger of UNB-Saint John and two campuses of New Brunswick Community College. Following widespread protests, the government abandoned this proposal, as well as a number of others.

Tuesday, 12 May, 2009

Post-secondary promises in Nova Scotia

Just as the British Columbia election clues up, Nova Scotia's politicians are hitting the hustings as the first week of that province's provincial election campaign draws to a close.

The Nova Scotia New Democrats released a modest platform today which, in part, calls for “up to $15,000 to university and college graduates who stay . . . in Nova Scotia”. I assume the NDP plans to build this into the existing Nova Scotia Graduate Tax Credit program.

Over in the Liberal camp, the third-place party is promising free tuition for up to 20 medical students per year granted they commit to practicing medicine in under-serviced areas of Nova Scotia.

Educating 30,000 additional nurses

The Canadian Nurses Association contends that the ongoing nursing shortage could become much more acute in the event that health human resources challenges remain unaddressed.

In a new report, the CNA estimates that there was a shortage of almost 11,000 full-time registered nurses in the country in 2007, and warns that this shortage could balloon to 60,000 nurses by 2022.

The CNA includes two nursing education recommendations in its list of six health care policy proposals. This includes reducing the number of nursing students who do not complete their program of study from 28 per cent to 15 per cent in order to graduate an additional 15,000 nurses over 15 years.

The CNA estimates that another 15,000 nurses could be trained over the next 15 years if enrollments in nursing programs were to be increased by 1,000 spaces per year in each of the next three years.

Monday, 11 May, 2009

Canada's new science policy

Prime Minister Harper recently appointed more climate change skeptics to federal scientific research funding boards:

Top Canadian scientists are accusing the Harper government of politicizing science funding and jeopardizing climate research by naming global warming critics to key boards that fund science.

The government's actions are "dreadful," said Garry Clarke, a leading international glaciologist at the University of British Columbia, and undercut public pledges to tackle climate change.

"Their mouths are doing one thing and their hands are doing something different," Prof. Clarke said.

Already alarmed over funding cuts to basic research, scientists say two appointments in particular are worrisome.

Read the rest here from The Globe and Mail.

Tuition fees in the British Columbia election

Tomorrow, May 12, is Election Day in the province of British Columbia. As is too frequently the norm in election campaigns, post-secondary education has received only a minimal amount of attention during the four-week campaign.

The issue of tuition fee costs appears to be the only post-secondary issue to receive any serious consideration on the campaign trail – most likely because BC’s college and university fees have more than doubled since 2002.

The governing Liberals have said they will continue to hold increases in tuition fees to the rate of inflation. For their part, the opposition New Democrats are offering an initial freeze on tuition and a subsequent reduction in fees once the provincial budget is balanced. The third-place Greens, who are unlikely to gain any seats in this election, have committed to a 20 per cent decrease in fees.

Friday, 8 May, 2009

Ontario tuition fees unfair: Faculty group

After comparing Ontario’s university tuition fee levels to those in the rest of Canada, the Ontario Confederation of University Faculty Associations (OCUFA) has concluded that the gap between Ontario university tuition fees and fees in the rest of Canada has widened by 21 per cent since the early 1990s.

According to OCUFA's analysis, Ontario students are paying more than they should be both in terms of actual cost and as a proportion of total operating revenue. In 2007-08, net student fees represented 41 per cent of university revenues in Ontario compared to 27 per cent for universities in the rest of Canada.

The chart below plots the Ontario-rest of Canada comparison of fees as percentage of revenue.

Thursday, 7 May, 2009

The Net Generation: Myths, Realities, Implications

Mark Bullen challenges the notions behind Tapscott's Net Generation and Prensky's Digital Natives in this insightful talk at TLt 2009.

Bullen, who is Associate Dean of the Learning and Teaching Centre at British Columbia Institute of Technology, blogs at Net Gen Skeptic.

Hat tip to Virtual High School Meanderings

Canada needs to invest in education & research

Words of wisdom from The Toronto Star's James Travers:

Good has been good enough for so long here that too few noticed how fast the country is falling behind by staying in the same place. More creative economies are growing faster and challenging our prestigious place at global forums.

Ottawa's claims that Canada is again starring on the world stage are absurdly mismatched against the pinched realities of foreign policies shaped by domestic politics.

Current events drag those abstractions back to earth. Monday's news featured another top researcher moving south, lured as much by Barack Obama's commitment to a knowledge economy as by his $10 billion investment.

Two days later, the Star reported a depressing yet hardly surprising Science, Technology and Innovation Council study that rated Canada's performance as, well, mediocre.

Wednesday, 6 May, 2009

Canada lags in research: Tech council report

Compared to other industrialized nations, Canadian business investment in research and development (R+D) remains at the back of the pack according to a report from the federal Science, Technology and Innovation Council.

Comparing the amount spent on R+D by companies as a portion of gross domestic product, Canada ranked second to last amongst G7 countries and 15th when compared with the other 29 countries in the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).

The report notes that Canada is also at the lower end of the list of OECD countries in terms of the numbers of PhD degrees awarded by Canadian universities and the numbers of students graduating with degrees in science and engineering.

Tuesday, 5 May, 2009

Continuing the project

After close to 10 months blogging at Maclean’s OnCampus, I have decided to relocate my adventures in blogging about Canadian post-secondary education back here.

I originally started this blog in January 2007 with the intention of providing a forum for discussing major issues, policies, practices, problems and research in Canadian post-secondary education, and also for sharing ideas and experiences with my students, colleagues and the public at large.

I am committed to continuing this project. Please stay tuned.

Coming soon . . .

Stay tuned.