Adventures in Canadian Post-Secondary Education: August 2009

Monday, 31 August, 2009

Number of Indian students in Canada increasing?

The number of Indian students in Canada has increased considerably because of less educational expenses there, a Canadian recruitment
official said today.

About 3,300 Indian students enrolled in Canadian educational institutes last year to pursue various undergraduate courses. The number was far above than the previous year, the official, Ginette Sanfacon, said.

Or not?

Australia last year attracted 96,739 Indian students, more than even the U.S. (94,563.) Canada had a mere 6,937 Indian students. Just 2.7 per cent of Indian students who decide to study abroad end up at a Canadian school. Five years ago, that figure was over 5 per cent.

(snip)

The battle within India for international college and university students has intensified in recent years. Australia has become an educational powerhouse in the industry, while Canada, education experts, is losing out badly.

5 problems with the Big 5 plan

Université du Québec à Montréal Rector Claude Corbo writes to The Hill Times:

Firstly, limiting some universities to undergraduate teaching, without significant faculty involvement in research, would gradually divest them of their very nature as institutes of higher learning. Even undergraduate students need to be trained in the most recent findings, and they should be inspired by teachers who, through their own research activities, are at the frontiers of their fields.

Secondly, as not all disciplines and all fields of study are offered in every university, our university system is already specialized. Incidentally, some of the significant disparities in research funding to universities can be explained by the presence or absence of a faculty of medicine. Thus, with $133-million and $122-million respectively, the University of Guelph and the University of Waterloo ranked 14th and 15th in research funding for Canadian universities in 2008. However, the first 13 institutions all have medical schools.

Thirdly, no university can seriously claim to excel in every field. Academic excellence is not like wall-to-wall carpeting. We must fund the excellence of researchers and research teams wherever they are found (and not according to the established reputation of the institution).

Fourthly, there is a natural tendency to invest heavily in research areas with practical benefits, from medical engineering to pharmacology, aerospace, agriculture, etc. However, societies are faced with economic, social, political, cultural and ethical problems whose solutions will not be facilitated by ignorance resulting from a lack of research in the humanities and the social sciences.

Finally, the "big five" universities benefit not only from significant government support but also from philanthropic assistance disproportionate to that enjoyed by the average institution. This is well and good, because younger or smaller universities have nothing to gain, in the long-term, from the weakening of these major institutions.

Study shows university grads may earn more than other PSE grads

New research from Ryerson University:

To assess the impact of education level on income, [Ryerson University economics professor Vicenzo] Caponi and his co-author, Miana Plesca of the University of Guelph, used data from Statistics Canada to examine the profiles of 3,200 Canadians with similar personal and family characteristics but different levels of education.

Among the factors that the researchers looked at were the level of education achieved by the parents of the study's respondents and the number of children in the family. Both can influence a student's choice of a course of study or, in some cases, the economic feasibility of continuing their education at the post-secondary level. These individuals in the study completed a high school, trade, college or an undergraduate university education. (Adults who earned a graduate degree or who did not finish high school were excluded from the study.)

The researchers found that university graduates earned, on average, 20 per cent more than those with a college education. Men with a college education earned 14 per cent more than those who completed high school. Women who graduated from a college, on average, made 21 per cent more than females with a high school education.

Hat tip to Academica's Top Ten

Canada's young and unemployed

David Olive writes in The Toronto Star:

With about a million British youth unemployed, ours is hardly an isolated crisis. A recent editorial in the conservative U.K. Economist says the "plight of the jobless young ... invokes talk of a lost generation." It notes the well-known phenomenon that "prolonged unemployment early in people's working lives will leave them scarred in the long term. Youngsters who have been jobless for a year or more tend to do worse in the labour market for the rest of their lives."

Joblessness among the young is a global epidemic. By recent UN calculations, young people make up about 25 per cent of the world's working population, but they account for 40 per cent of the unemployed.

(snip)

Britain's Tory opposition proposes a scheme to create 100,000 more employee work apprenticeships and a fund to help finance job opportunities for the young. The Obama administration and the U.S. Congress have committed to a comprehensive set of job-creation and job-enrichment programs.

In Canada we seem to be heading in the opposite direction. With recent Canadian government announcements of much higher than expected deficits, public spending on workplace preparation for young people will be an easy target for still further cuts, even as tuitions continue to rise at budget-constrained universities and colleges.

The bottom line is a passive decision in Canada to underinvest in the nation's future. It's said that a dream deferred is a dream denied. But the cost of a lost generation will be inflicted widely, as Canada risks losing its competitive edge and its claim on sustained prosperity.

Sunday, 30 August, 2009

Doctoral dissertations in haiku

Via The Huffington Post:

One of my old professors liked to say that a poem isn't any good unless you can explain it to a three-year-old. I never would have thought one could apply that same standard to a doctoral dissertation, but then I came across a brilliant little website called Dissertation Haiku.

The site is a collection of actual doctoral dissertations that have been distilled into a single haiku. These haiku are written and submitted by the graduate students themselves.

Social class and post-secondary participation

From The Montreal Gazette:

Whether it's their first day of kindergarten or final year of university, students will head to class this fall carrying something that could influence their success more than anything in their backpacks: their family's social class.

Generally measured by parents' education, income and type of occupation, many researchers say that in Canada, socioeconomic status is the single most important factor in determining a child's educational path - and their prospects in life.

"We don't often talk about social class anymore," says Wolfgang Lehmann, a sociology professor at the University of Western Ontario. "It's true for essentially all Western industrialized countries that class has continued to be the most reliable predictor of educational attainment."

Even from the earliest days of kindergarten, a Quebec study suggested that children with less educated mothers fared more poorly in "school readiness" than their peers, with lower scores in language and cognitive development, physical health, general knowledge and communication skills, such as the ability to tell a story.

There were similar links with low parental income and such disadvantages persisting in later grades, the study concluded.

Statistics Canada research finds that among older students, those whose parents had a post-secondary diploma were nearly three times as likely to go to university than those whose parents had less education. Post-secondary enrolment rises with parental income, too, the federal agency noted.

Lehmann has spent the last four years tracking a group of working-class, "first-generation students" - those first in their families to go to university. These students face disadvantages, he writes in a newly published paper, including constant worries about money and managing part-time jobs alongside their studies, anxiety over whether they'll be able to fit in and keep up in class, and families who can't offer advice based on experience or fully understand campus life.

Students turning to downloadable textbooks

From The Canadian Press:

The National Association of College Stores - a U.S. group that also represents 72 Canadian stores - predicts that digital textbooks, while currently representing only a tiny portion of the market, could account for 15 per cent of all university textbook sales by 2011-12.

Saturday, 29 August, 2009

A bad idea, poorly expressed

The Globe and Mail's Jeffrey Simpson chimes in on the Big 5's plan for research funding:

Recently, the presidents of five big Canadian universities (British Columbia, Alberta, Toronto, McGill and Montreal) publicly demanded a greater share for themselves of public research money. They argued that more research money and graduate students for their campuses would promote excellence, thereby enhancing the country's research capabilities and competitiveness. Other, presumably lesser, universities should concentrate more on teaching.

This is a bad idea, poorly expressed. Back in the 1990s, a handful of university presidents (Rob Pritchard, Martha Piper and Robert Lacroix) and federal civil servants, worked with senior ministers (Paul Martin, John Manley) and prime minister Jean Chrétien on the suite of policies that have so greatly assisted universities. These included, among other initiatives, the Canada Research Chairs, the Canada Foundation for Innovation, Genome Canada, plus increases in funding for the academic granting councils.

The policies' subtext was to assist disproportionately the 12 or so most research-intensive universities. But nobody publicly articulated that objective, because had they done so, every other university would have squawked.

By going public with this demand (whatever happened to the other research-intensive universities such as Western or Queen's or Laval or Dalhousie?), the Big Five presidents predictably have brought down on them the wrath of all the other universities.

Theirs was a bad idea anyway. The Big Five were already receiving about a third of all federal grant money. They have greater private fundraising capabilities than many other universities. What they need to do is to carry on getting a big slice of public research money, while focusing much harder on undergraduate teaching, which The Globe and Mail student satisfaction surveys consistently show leave lots to be desired at those schools.

Friday, 28 August, 2009

Abstracted: College-university collaboration

My article on program articulation and inter-sectoral collaboration, titled Advancing Articulation: Models of College-University Collaboration in Canadian Higher Education, appears in the recent issue of The College Quarterly. The abstract:

This paper reports on the results of an analysis of program articulation between the college and university sectors in Canada. The Canadian post-secondary system is best described as a binary system with discrete university and non-university sectors. While there are complex sectoral differences between the two institutional types in terms of their history, mandate, culture and governance and significant differences between the level of coordination existent in each of the provinces, a number of transfer and collaborative program models have emerged and are identifiable. The program transfer models include the course-by-course transfer model, the multiple course transfer model, the block transfer model, and the program bridging transfer model. The identified collaborative models outlined include the integrated model, the articulated model, the parallel model, the sandwich model and two different hybrid models. As the categorization provided indicates, these models require varying levels of institutional integration and cooperation.

End of the road for Ireland's free tuition?

University World News story

The end is nigh for free higher education in Ireland. Even the timing of its demise is known - September 2010, barring some miraculous political intervention. The only decision that has to be made is the manner of its departure.

A few years ago, such a prospect was barely thinkable. The Celtic Tiger was booming. Academics and government officials from overseas were flocking to Ireland to wonder could they replicate its growth rate, its ability to attract foreign direct investment, particularly in pharmaceuticals and ICT.

Infrastructure was racing to catch up with the growth which reversed decades of emigration and sucked in tens of thousands of immigrants. The Dublin skyline was crowded with giant cranes which have suddenly disappeared or gone silent as the recession hits Ireland harder than most OECD countries.

After years of good economic tidings, the public has become inured to a welter of bad economic news over the past 12 months. The green shoots of recovery may be appearing elsewhere but they would find barren soil in Ireland where the gap between government spending and tax revenues is exceptionally wide by OECD standards.

Salaries have been cut, taxes have risen and unemployment is seeping into the professions and middle class homes once thought to be immune from economic vagaries.

The government has been told by a high powered advisory group that it will have to make further budgetary changes which will impact on education, social welfare and health in particular.

In higher education, rationalisation and staff reductions are inevitable as is the rationalisation of several state agencies. Getting rid of quangos is the new political blood sport in Ireland.

Ontario graduates suing college

From The Toronto Star:

Two days after the provincial ombudsman lambasted the government for failing to protect college students, another group of students has alleged their college left them unqualified in their field and on the hook for enormous debt.

Two former students, who took the International Business Management program at Toronto's George Brown College, claim it didn't confer three important industry designations it had promised.

Thursday, 27 August, 2009

Nova Scotia creates graduate intern program

Government of Nova Scotia media release:

Nova Scotia's up-and-coming young researchers will get a big boost to their education under a new program.

The Accelerate Nova Scotia program will pair 20 of Nova Scotia's brightest graduate students with local companies for applied-research projects.

Education Minister Marilyn More says the pairings increase student knowledge, build connections that help foster the vital knowledge economy and help keep Nova Scotia's young people at home.

The program will be cost-shared by the province, the federal government and industry. Nova Scotia contributes 100-thousand-dollars to the total budget of 400-thousand-dollars.

UWindsor president on Big 5 elite agenda

From The Windsor Star:

The president of the University of Windsor is calling a move by Canada’s five largest universities to claim “elite” status and push for the lion’s share of government research funding “an insult” to smaller schools across the country.

“To assume that only the five biggest universities can do research and make important discoveries that can make a difference is quite arrogant,” said Alan Wildeman.

He was responding to demands for special government support from the universities of Toronto and Montreal, the University of British Columbia, the University of Alberta and McGill University.

“The Big 5 do some fabulous work and research,” Wildeman said. “Still, to send the message that only those are doing great work, is something else. I don’t buy that.”

Webometrics Ranking of World Universities

From Higher Edge:

US universities scored high according to the 'Webometrics Ranking of World Universities', an initiative belonging to CSIC, the largest public research body in Spain.

CSIC is attached to Spain's Ministry of Education and rates Universities according to their web presence and is aimed at motivating universities and scholars to have a web presence that accurately reflects their activities. As a result, acclaimed universities such as Yale and Princeton were rated lower than was expected whilst universities that have embraced the net such as the University of Toronto (placed 28th) excelled.

Although US universities dominated, 6 Canadian universities placed in the top 100 with a few surprise contenders from developing countries rating well, such as the University of Sao Paulo (placed 38th).

The 6 Canadian universities in the top 100 are:

University of Toronto (28)
University of British Columbia (41)
Simon Fraser University (57)
University of Alberta (73)
University of Calgary (78)
Université de Montreal (93)

Wednesday, 26 August, 2009

Harnessing Canada's research potential

Ron Freedman, CEO of Research Infosource Inc., writes in today's Toronto Star:

Forget the apocalyptic statements about "deep cuts" to publicly funded research that fuelled headlines across Canada this past spring. In fact, university and hospital research funding rose last year by 5.2 per cent, to $6.1 billion, maintaining 10 years of solid growth.

Those doom and gloom warnings mask a deeper malaise over the future of research in this country. The larger problem is that policy leaders have run out of new ideas about how to tap the creative potential of the country's universities, colleges, research hospitals and, most important, companies.

Canada is stuck in a 20th century paradigm of research funding that is proving increasingly unsuited to the 21st.

Tuesday, 25 August, 2009

Nova Scotian students at Memorial University

This morning I was interviewed by Don Connolly from CBC Radio Nova Scotia. A recording of the interview is available on-line here.

I managed to mis-speak a couple of times (I'll blame the hour of the day). So to clarify, Maritime student enrolment at Memorial University of Newfoundland has increased more than ten-fold since 1999. Almost three-quarters of those students came from Nova Scotia.

ON government warned to keep eye on colleges

From The Canadian Press:

Ontario's ombudsman is warning the provincial government to keep a closer eye on colleges after finding a Cambrian College program left graduates unqualified in their field.

After a months-long investigation into a two-year Health Information Management program, Andre Marin concluded the Cambrian program was not formally recognized by the Canadian Health Information Management Association, which controls entry into the profession.

Earlier this year, 11 students who graduated from the Sudbury college's program complained that the program is unaccredited and did not adequately qualify them for jobs in their chosen field.

Students who graduated from the program were ineligible to write a national test administered by CHIMA that would certify them to work in the profession.

The report recommends Cambrian compensate students for allowing them to enrol in a program that was "highly unlikely" lead to employment.

Greening first-year student orientation

From mun.ca:

Four thousand lucky incoming students will receive free water bottles this September, with an aim to increase awareness around sustainable water use.

Both Student Affairs and Services and the Memorial University of Newfoundland Students’ Union will provide the water bottles at orientation for first-year students and at registration locations for people attending university for the first time.

The idea came from witnessing the environmental impact of orientations past," says Student Life Program Liaison Officer Meghan Mitchell.

“After orientation was over, there were piles of bottles around, overflowing the recycling bins,” she says. “Many of them would only have a few sips taken out of them and then be put down and forgotten.”

To really drive the sustainability quotient home this year, students’ orientation information will be stored on a USB key instead of on sheets of paper. The keys will then be distributed by placing them inside the water bottles. Students will be encouraged to fill their bottles from the new chilled and filtered water fountains on campus.

In an effort to encourage people to go “Bottled Water Free,” 13 of the new fountains will accommodate all refillable water bottles. In recent years, there has been a trend toward the commodification of water instead of free access to public water, something Memorial’s Students for Sustainability has been demanding of the university’s administration.

“Students are really catching that bug,” says Adam Daniels, Resource Co-ordinator at MUNSU. “We also know students are looking to attend universities that are integrating more sustainable practices.”

This year’s cache of freebie water bottles will also come with the added bonus of being bisphenol-A free – a controversial chemical found in some plastics.

Separating the haves from the have-nots

With the regularity of an eclipse cycle, every few years talk emerges of the “need” to re-organize Canadian universities into a multi-tiered system.

The recent round of discussion on this began with an interview between Maclean’s magazine and the presidents of the five largest universities in Canada. The so-called Big 5 strongly contend that they should be the focus of the country's research efforts, and research funding, while the other eighty odd universities across the country should focus on, well, other stuff.

Here's how Carleton University's president has responded to such talk in The Globe and Mail:

If we import this model, graduates of our top-tier schools will want to work only at top-tier schools. They will form a kind of club that makes it very difficult for students from other schools to matriculate, do graduate work or teach. The result could be good graduates leaving the country to work in a less stratified environment.

When we limit possibilities, we limit opportunities. We need to open doors and minds. We need to avoid labels. We need to allow the smallest institutions to join the competition. The large schools already receive the lion's share of the grants. This is to be expected. They have the size, the labs and the resources. Yet, small schools do win occasionally, inspiring other scholars there to work harder.

Competition is good for the system. Collaboration is also good. We cannot achieve a collaborative environment when there are clearly established “haves” and “have-nots.” Small universities should not be colonies of the large; they should be intellectual partners.

Monday, 24 August, 2009

Ontario's struggling students

From The Toronto Sun:

Struggling to cope in a lousy student job market, they are three of thousands of undergraduate students who couldn't find full-time work this summer but had to line up this week to pay mounting tuition fees to register for the fall semester.

Ontario's university tuition fees are the second highest in the country -- almost $1,000 over the national average.

And fees for professional programs such as medicine are the highest in Canada, averaging $9,000 per year.

This combination of high fees and the worst job market in the country for student employment in decades has hit students hard.

Canada's big 5 campaigning for elite universities

From The Globe and Mail's Elizabeth Church:

he leaders of five top universities have unleashed a raging debate on the nation's campuses, arguing that Canada needs an elite group of postsecondary institutions focusing on research and graduate education.

The leaders of the universities of British Columbia, Alberta, Toronto and Montreal, as well as McGill, are pushing for what they describe as a national strategy for higher education. But they have run up against criticism from peers who see their efforts as a less-than-subtle attempt to get a larger share of scarce resources.

Sunday, 23 August, 2009

Back to school for recessionary refugees

From The Financial Post:

Recessionary refugees . . . will dramatically boost campus populations this fall as the national unemployment rate balloons to 8.6%. Some 414,000 Canadians have been jobless since October 2008.

And for those who have spent decades honing a skill that is no longer marketable or desirable, returning to school for a second chance at a career has become almost a necessity.

Jim Knight, president of the Association of Canadian Community Colleges, said there have been spikes in applications in all sectors of post-secondary education this summer, but colleges and institutes are far outpacing universities.
. . .

Overall, applications to colleges have exploded between 15% and 20% this summer - far above historical averages, Mr. Knight said.

College diplomas and certificates are attractive for the newly unemployed because they tend to be cheaper than universities and require only a one- or two-year commitment, Mr. Knight said. The academic demands for acceptance and completion are also less rigorous. Some of the most popular areas for courses are health services, construction technology and culinary arts.

Atlantic universities competing for students

Canadian Press story:

With Atlantic provinces looking at a plunge in the number of high school graduates in the next decade, universities in the region are casting a wider recruitment net and becoming more competitive as they fight to attract students from a dwindling pool of applications.

After ten years of growth across the country, fewer students are enrolling in undergraduate programs, according to information released by Statistics Canada in July.

The Atlantic region is being hit the hardest. The number of full-time students declined in all four Atlantic provinces in 2007-2008 -- from less than one per cent in New Brunswick to more than four per cent in Prince Edward Island.
. . .

Darin King, the minister of education in Newfoundland and Labrador, said his province already has a recruiting advantage over its regional competitors.

Since 2001, tuition fees in the province have been frozen. And earlier this month, the Newfoundland and Labrador government eliminated interest on provincial student loans -- the first province in the country to do so -- in a move that could make it a more attractive place to study.

"We're trying to do our best to offer a student aid package ... and enticing them to come to Newfoundland," King said.

A June survey by the Maritime Provinces Higher Education Commission said the number of students from the Maritimes at Memorial University, Newfoundland and Labrador's only university, increased by 884 per cent between 1999 and 2007. Almost three-quarters of those students came from Nova Scotia.

Friday, 21 August, 2009

Journal article retractions have risen tenfold

Times Higher Education story:

The rate at which scientific journal articles are being retracted has increased roughly tenfold over the past two decades, an exclusive analysis for Times Higher Education reveals.

Growth in research fraud as a result of greater pressure on researchers to publish, improved detection and demands on editors to take action have been raised as possible factors in the change.

The study, by the academic-data provider Thomson Reuters, follows the retraction last month of a paper on the creation of sperm from human embryonic stem cells.

The paper, written by researchers at Newcastle University, was withdrawn by the Stem Cells and Development journal following its discovery that the paper's introduction was largely plagiarised.

The Thomson Reuters analysis charts the number of peer-reviewed scientific-journal articles produced each year from 1990 and the number of retractions.

It shows that over nearly 20 years the number of articles produced has doubled, but the number of retractions - still a small fraction of the literature - has increased 20 times. This is equal to a tenfold increase, factoring in the growth of articles.

The data are extracted from the Thomson Reuters Web of Science citation database, and apply to the journals covered by its Science Citation Index Expanded.

UK teens scramble for university places

Teenagers who failed to get their first choices for university are rushing to find courses amid a squeeze on places.

Thursday, 20 August, 2009

Aiming for carbon neutral universities

From Laura Shin's Climate Chronicles:

As college students return to school, they will be discovering subtle changes designed to reduce their climate footprints, from new low-energy lighting and renewable power sources to the removal of cafeteria trays to cut back on wash time.

In recent years, universities across the United States have taken it upon themselves to reduce their environmental impact. Their students, fully aware that climate change will be one of the greatest challenges of their generation, and outside sources such as the College Sustainability Report Card and Princeton Review are carefully scrutinizing and encouraging their efforts.

So far, 650 schools – home to about a third of all college students nationwide – have signed the American College and University Presidents’ Climate Commitment to become carbon neutral and produce zero net emissions, coming close to creating the nation's "first sector-wide commitment to climate neutrality,” says Toni Nelson, program director for ACUPCC. And many prominent schools that have not signed, including most of the Ivy League and Stanford University, already have strong sustainability programs in place.

Study finds that online education beats the classroom

From Steve Lohr's New York Times blog:

A recent 93-page report on online education, conducted by SRI International for the Department of Education, has a starchy academic title, but a most intriguing conclusion: “On average, students in online learning conditions performed better than those receiving face-to-face instruction.”

The report examined the comparative research on online versus traditional classroom teaching from 1996 to 2008. Some of it was in K-12 settings, but most of the comparative studies were done in colleges and adult continuing-education programs of various kinds, from medical training to the military.

Over the 12-year span, the report found 99 studies in which there were quantitative comparisons of online and classroom performance for the same courses. The analysis for the Department of Education found that, on average, students doing some or all of the course online would rank in the 59th percentile in tested performance, compared with the average classroom student scoring in the 50th percentile. That is a modest but statistically meaningful difference.

Tuesday, 18 August, 2009

Students increasingly worried about finances

From the CBC News:

Half of Canadian post-secondary students expect their money will run out before the end of the coming school year, according to a new survey on student finances.

An Ipsos Reid poll commissioned by RBC also found that about one-third of respondents were worried that their spending money would be gone by Christmas.

Why don’t you Yaffle that?

Unique online resource linking community members to Memorial University researchers and research projects attracts interest worldwide.

Thursday, 13 August, 2009

Trends in student borrowing

Several U.S. states have recently made deep cuts to student financial aid programs but in the meantime the demand for student assistance is on the rise.

U.S. Department of Education statistics from the first quarter show that student aid applications jumped over 25 per cent compared to last year. Recent statistics also indicate that the amounts lent to student borrowers in the U.S. continues to rise.

Meanwhile, closer to home:

The number of requests for student financial aid is on the rise in Ontario after a dismal economic year for young people, and university officials say it could be just the start of a flood of applicants that will wash over universities this fall.

Wednesday, 12 August, 2009

‘Not for the likes of us’

From the Times Higher Education:

Thousands of bright state-school students [in the United Kingdom] are missing out on places at the most selective universities despite having the appropriate A-level results, a study has found.

Pupils from top independent schools make twice as many applications to leading research universities as their peers from comprehensive schools with similar grades, according to research by education charity the Sutton Trust and the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills.

And application rates from further education colleges to the top universities are less than half those seen from other types of school, even after differences in attainment are taken into account.

However, those who have a go stand an equal chance of acceptance: young people with similar attainment who do apply to demanding degree courses are equally likely to get an offer, regardless of the type of school or college they attend.

Tuesday, 11 August, 2009

The coming end of the textbook

This article in The New York Times discusses the continuing shift away from textbooks and print media toward on-line, open-source, and digital learning resources.

Of course, it is only a matter of time before someone packages the equivalent of a Kindle, cell phone, camera, and computer (and who knows what else) into a single device.

Monday, 10 August, 2009

Memorial University's teaching assistants unionize

From the St. John's Telegram:

Graduate student teaching and research assistants at Memorial University have voted in favour of forming a union — the Teaching Assistants’ Union of Memorial University of Newfoundland.

The assistants began their drive for unionization in January resulting in a certification vote which took place April 1 and 2. Of the 71 per cent of the group that voted, 96 per cent voted in favour of unionization.

This generation's raw deal

From the editorial in The Globe and Mail today:

As analysts slice the numbers to determine the recession's winners and losers, one often forgotten demographic, with modest aspirations, is starting to stand out. As a group, youth expect three things: that jobs will be available to them; that opportunities for further training and advancement are within reach; and that they will not be saddled with costs bequeathed by previous generations. In each regard, young Canadians are getting a raw deal.

The recent data on jobs are staggering. Employment for those from 15 to 24 years of age has fallen by 200,000 in the last year, or two-thirds of the total national decline. The summer unemployment rate for students is now at 20.9 per cent, the highest since at least 1977, when this data started to be collected.
. . .

Compounding the situation for high school graduates is an increasingly burdened postsecondary system. Tuition increases for undergraduate education have averaged 4.4 per cent a year in the past decade, nearly twice the rate of inflation in the same period. Despite the financial deterrent, students are managing to enroll, but are finding larger classrooms; the increase in student numbers was three times the rate of increase in faculty hiring from 1995 to 2005.

Will that be cash? No Chargex.

Last week Concordia University joined the growing list of universities which no longer allow students to pay tuition or other fees using a credit card. In New Brunswick, the Université de Moncton is the only remaining public university to allow credit card payments for fees, and the list of others includes:

Carleton University
Dalhousie University
McGill University
Queen’s University
University of Alberta
University of British Columbia
University of Calgary
UPEI (as of Sept. 2010)
University of Toronto
University of Victoria

Student groups have spoken out against these changes, which obviously limit their options for paying fees. If you are aware of other colleges or universities that have instituted the no credit card policy, I'd be interested in hearing from you.

Saturday, 8 August, 2009

Weekend music blogging: Serena Ryder

This weekend we are celebrating the 33rd Annual Newfoundland and Labrador Folk Festival. The festival is one of the highlights of summer in St. John's.

Tomorrow night, the final act of the festival will be performed by Juno Award-winning singer/songwriter Serena Ryder. Here's Serena doing an amazing acoustic performance of her single 'Little Bit of Red':

Early death risk for 'neets': Senior UK civil servant

Another social cost of exclusion from education and training:

Teenagers who are out of education and work for a long period could have a one in six chance of being dead within 10 years, a top [UK] civil servant has claimed.

Youngsters who become "Neet" - not in education, employment or training - face not just difficulties and hardship, but "real dangers and a downward spiral" which can lead to them dying "very, very young", Jon Coles, director-general of schools at the Department for Children, Schools and Families said.

Friday, 7 August, 2009

Student suing CarletonU over attack

Meanwhile, the university strangely blames the victim of the brutal assault:

The victim of a violent and still-unsolved sex attack in a Carleton University chemistry lab nearly two years ago has filed a half-million-dollar lawsuit against the university.

In a statement of claim, the 25-year-old Ottawa woman says university officials were negligent by failing to take adequate security measures, including equipping laboratory buildings with security devices such as swipe cards and ensuring that door and tunnel entrances to the building were visibly monitored by security cameras.

But in a statement of defence, the university alleges the victim was herself negligent by failing to keep a “proper lookout” for her own safety and failing to register with Department of University Safety as a student working late.

Canada's student unemployment hits record high

From Statistics Canada's latest Labour Force Survey:

Employment was down 10.9% (-152,000) for students aged 15 to 24 in July 2009 compared with 12 months earlier, the fastest year-over-year rate of decline for a month of July since 1982.

July's unemployment rate for students climbed to 20.9%, a 7.1 percentage point increase from July 2008. This was the highest July unemployment rate for these students since comparable data became available in 1977.

The Canadian Federation of Students responds:

"Students who have been unable to find work this summer will be forced to take on more debt and may be unable to afford to return to school this fall," said Katherine Giroux-Bougard, National Chairperson of the Canadian Federation of Students. "Summer jobs are not a luxury; they pay the bills."

The Canadian Alliance of Student Associations responds:

"Students who are unable to find work this summer will have a much harder time paying for their education this fall, and might not be able to return to school in September " said Arati Sharma, National Director of the Canadian Alliance of Student Associations.

UToronto fee protesters want charges dropped

National Post story:

Two former student governors at the University of Toronto have applied to have 16-month-old forcible confinement charges against them dropped in a case that one of them says "criminalizes dissent."

The charges date back to a March 2008 protest against the university's plans to impose increased ancillary fees. As senior members of the Association of Part-time Undergraduate Students (APUS), Oriel Varga and Christopher Ramsaroop played an important role in the organization of the sit-in protest outside university administration offices.

One month later, they were among 14 arrested for the forcible confinement of five employees stuck inside.

Panel says all UIllinois trustees should resign

{insert shoe dropping sound here}

A panel investigating the role that clout played in University of Illinois admissions recommended in its final report released on Thursday that all trustees voluntarily submit their resignations and let Gov. Pat Quinn decide which ones to accept.

In a scathing 45-page report, the Illinois Admissions Review Commission found unqualified students were admitted because of political connections, and recommended that any new trustees conduct a review of the university's president, the chancellor of the Champaign campus and other administrators.

Thursday, 6 August, 2009

And the rankings keep on coming

École des Mines de Paris has released a ranking of post-secondary institutions that are "preparing students adequately for professional activities", giving the top five Canadian spots to Concordia, Queen’s, Toronto, McGill, and Manitoba.

Forbes Magazine has released its 2009 rankings for public and private universities in the United States. Forbes gives the top spot to the U.S. Military Academy, or West Point. Rounding out the top five are Princeton, California Institute of Technology, Williams College, and Harvard.

Congratulations to our colleague Dr. Marc Glassman

Dr. Marc Glassman, who is a professor of education at Memorial University of Newfoundland, is this year's Newfoundland and Labrador recipient of the Council of the Federation Literacy Award. About Dr. Glassman:

For the past 32 years, Dr. Marc Glassman's knowledge, passion and commitment to the literacy movement in Newfoundland and Labrador has been far-reaching and significant. Dr. Glassman is a member of the Faculty of Education at Memorial University and instructs in the area of literacy education. He has undertaken a number of special initiatives in the community that have helped a diverse group of children, parents, and low-literacy adults overcome the barriers to language and literacy development. He has inspired and challenged his undergraduate and graduate students, and he has provided professional support to teachers in the K-12 classroom and to instructors and volunteers in adult literacy programs throughout the province. He has been a pioneer in the area of applying technology to the development of literacy in Newfoundland and Labrador and continues to be innovative and creative in advocating for literacy.

Wednesday, 5 August, 2009

Higher education tailored for people with autism

As reported by the San Francisco Chronicle:

The California State University East Bay campus in the Hayward hills is the site of an unusual experiment in higher education for people with autism. Starting in the fall quarter, college-age autistics will be encouraged to attend and build an educational community; one that draws on the autistics' unusual academic strengths. The experiment will test the possibilities for autistics in a university setting, and more generally the possibilities for a range of students with disabilities

Institutions make plans for swine flu on campus

Canadian Press story:

As students stock up on school supplies and get ready to hit the books this fall, post-secondary institutions are making preparations of their own, fine-tuning their action plans in the event that swine flu cases surface on campus.

The Public Health Agency of Canada says that under the Canadian Pandemic Influenza Plan, all large institutions - including colleges and universities - are encouraged to have pandemic preparedness plans.

UManitoba raps former prof for academic fraud

From the Winnipeg Free Press:

The University of Manitoba has sanctioned a former researcher after an internal investigation concluded he faked data and made up experiments that led to a seemingly groundbreaking study published in one of the world's most prestigious science journals.

The news that disgraced U of M plant science researcher Fawzi Razem committed the biggest sin in science comes eight months after the journal Nature retracted what was once considered a breakthrough study.

Razem, working in the lab of Prof. Robert Hill, claimed to have discovered a receptor for the major hormone linked to a plant's response to environmental stress. The receptor that has eluded scientists for two decades was identified in an article and featured in the editor's summary in the January 2006 edition of Nature, one of the world's most renowned international science journals.

Tuesday, 4 August, 2009

Calls for Arctic university continue

As reported by the CBC News:

The calls are growing to establish a university in Canada's North as more northerners and academics say they need a permanent institution north of 60 where students and researchers can study.

Canada is the only Arctic nation that does not have a university physically based in the North, meaning northern residents must move to southern Canada to pursue post-secondary studies.

But the calls for a northern university have grown to the point where everyone who supports the idea should come together soon, said Marianne Douglas, director of the Canadian Circumpolar Institute at the University of Alberta in Edmonton.

"We need a conference or a workshop in which we get federal, territorial and provincial players from the education scene, as well as some of the affiliates, to really see how can we actually facilitate this," Douglas told CBC News.

NL government lauded for investments in students

Following on the discussion about the Newfoundland and Labrador government's decision to eliminate student loan interest, the editorial in today's St. John's Telegram commends the government of Premier Danny Williams for its investments in post-secondary education:

It’s the kind of thing a parent might tell you: “the only thing we can give you is an opportunity for an education.”

For students in this province, it sure looks like a commitment the provincial government is trying to keep. Friday, the province officially stopped charging interest on its share of student loans. Before Aug. 1, the province was charging 2.25 per cent. It means that students carrying hefty debt loads will be able to work their way out from under that burden more quickly.

It’s only the latest change for post-secondary students made by the government of Premier Danny Williams: the province has already instituted increases to its grants program for post-secondary students, and this year — as it has since 2005 — the province again froze tuition rates at the province’s public post-secondary institutions.

All in all, it means being a student is a little bit easier from a financial standpoint. If you’re thinking of either starting in school or going back to finish a degree or program, the math just got a little bit easier.

Apollo completes UK landing

From The Times Higher Education:

The owner of the largest profit-making university in the US has bought BPP Holdings, the UK’s largest private higher education provider.

Apollo Global, a subsidiary of Apollo Group, the American for-profit higher education company that owns the University of Phoenix, has formally acquired BPP for £368 million.

The move is expected to herald the creation of a wave of new private colleges and universities in the UK, as Apollo has confirmed that it intends to use the acquisition to expand into Europe.

The announcement came as David Willetts, the Shadow Universities Minister, made it clear that a Conservative Government would encourage increased competition from private players in the UK higher education sector.

Monday, 3 August, 2009

Big 5 presidents plan for elite universities

From the write-up on the recent sit-down between Maclean's magazine staff and the presidents of Canada’s five largest universities:

Over the course of a 90-minute video conference, the big five presidents said their institutions must be given the means and mandates to set themselves still further apart from the rest of Canada’s universities—to pursue world-class scientific research and train the most capable graduate students, while other schools concentrate on undergraduate education. The vision they described would be a challenge to the one-size-fits-all mentality that has governed Canada’s higher education system.

Jobless grad suing alma mater for tuition fees

From The Associated Press:

A New York City woman who says she can't find a job is suing the college where she earned a bachelor's degree.

Trina Thompson filed a lawsuit last week against Monroe College in Bronx Supreme Court, The New York Post reports. The 27-year-old is seeking the (Canadian) $70,000 she spent on tuition.

Thompson says she's been unable to find gainful employment since she received her information technology degree in April.

She says the Bronx school's Office of Career Advancement hasn't provided her with the leads and career advice it promises.

Monroe College spokesman Gary Axelbank says Thompson's lawsuit is completely without merit.

Sunday, 2 August, 2009

Staff cuts boost class sizes on some campuses

Last week The Globe and Mail's Elizabeth Church wrote about the impact of staff reductions at Canada's cash-strapped universities:

A wave of staff reductions at cash-strapped universities will mean larger classes and fewer services for students at campuses this September.

The budget squeeze – the result of falling investment income and rising costs, especially for pensions – has left many universities scrambling to find millions of dollars in savings for the coming school year. With salaries accounting for the lion's share of budgets, job losses are the inevitable result, school leaders say. That's led to a range of actions to reduce head counts on campus, including layoffs, buyout offers, the cancellation of teaching contracts and hiring freezes.

Saturday, 1 August, 2009

Iranians drawn to graduate studies in Canada

From the Canadian Press:

When the University of Alberta totalled up its applications from international graduate students wanting to study in Edmonton this September, the school noticed something it hadn't seen before.

Typically, the largest group of students comes from China, followed by the United States and France. But this year, Iran led the way with 618 master's and PhD applicants, a jump of 60 per cent over 2008.
. . .

It's a trend that has been noticed at other schools across the country and was happening even before this summer's events.

The number of graduate students from Iran tripled between 2002 and 2006, according to figures from the Association of Universities and Colleges of Canada. Iran ranked sixth among countries sending graduate students to Canada in 2006, the association said.

At McGill in Montreal, Iran ranked 14th in 2003. It is now eighth, with 149 grad students accepted in 2008.