Adventures in Canadian Post-Secondary Education: October 2009

Saturday, 31 October, 2009

Ontario legislation creates College of Trades

From the Ontario Ministry of Training, Colleges and Universities:

The McGuinty government has passed legislation to establish the Ontario College of Trades, a regulatory college that will modernize the province's apprenticeship and skilled trades system.

The College will encourage more people to work in the trades and help the system better serve employers, skilled tradespeople, apprentices and consumers.

Establishing the College puts skilled trades on a similar footing with teachers, doctors and nurses, who have their own professional regulatory colleges.

The College was established after expert reviews and public consultations. Its governance structure provides a balanced approach that considers the needs of its members, the economy and the public.

The Ontario College of Trades and Apprenticeship Act, 2009 passed third reading in the Legislature on October 27, 2009. Upon royal assent of the Legislation, the College will be implemented in phases and become fully operational in 2012.

Thursday, 29 October, 2009

Canada's withering public policy research capacity

It's been a hell of a couple of years for people who conduct research on public policy in Canada, especially in the areas of education and youth.

First, the federal government took an axe to the Canada Millennium Scholarship Foundation, killing it off along with its research arm which produced research in areas such as post-secondary education affordability and accessibility.

Next up, the Canadian Council on Learning which has basically been extended for a year with no apparent further funding coming from the federal government. As a result, the Council has significantly cut back on its operations and eliminated many of its programs.

And today? Well, the headline says it all, Canadian Policy Research Networks will close its doors after 15 years of independent public policy research:

It is with sadness that I must announce that after 15 years of quality public policy research, Canadian Policy Research Networks [CPRN] is no longer financially viable and will cease operations. Unfortunately, in these tough economic times, without a steady and long-term financial commitment from governments and other public and private funding sources, an independent, non-partisan organization like CPRN is no longer possible.

Abstracted: Career goals of high school students

Statistics Canada has released a new report on high school students' knowledge of the educational requirements needed to achieve their career goals. The (lengthy) abstract:

Do students know the education required to achieve their career objectives? Is this information related to their education pathways? To address these questions, the Youth in Transition Survey (YITS), Cohort A is used to compare high school students’ perceptions of the level of education they will require for the job they intend to hold at age 30, with the level required according to professional job analysts at Human Resources and Skills Development Canada (HRSDC). The focus is on students intending to work in a job which requires a university degree, and examine the correlation between the knowledge of educational requirements and subsequent university enrolment. The results suggest that about three out of four students intending to work in a job requiring a university degree are aware of the education they will require. Evidence suggests that knowledge of educational requirements is related to academic performance and socio-economic background. Differences by intended occupation are quite small. Moreover, students who know that a university degree is required are more likely to attend university, even after accounting for differences in academic performance, sex, and socioeconomic background. In fact, the knowledge of educational requirements is as strongly related to university attendance as other well-documented correlates such as sex, academic performance and parental education. Finally, higher university attendance rates are observed when students learn earlier (rather than later), that a university degree is required for their intended job.

Reference: Frenette, M. (2009). Career goals in high school: Do students know what it takes to reach them, and does it matter? Ottawa, ON: Statistics Canada. Retrieved October 29, 2009, from http://www.statcan.gc.ca/pub/11f0019m/11f0019m2009320-eng.htm

Grants increase for Scottish students

From the BBC News:

A students' union has welcomed an increase in grants announced by the Scottish Education Secretary.

Fiona Hyslop said as a result of discussions with the [National Union of Students] there would be a rise for the poorest students of up to £1,227.

There will also be a grant for mature students of up to £1,000 and £2m will be given to students for childcare.

Ms Hyslop said the move, which has won cross-party support, would boost the income of more than 75,000 students.

Wednesday, 28 October, 2009

Fraudulent ON colleges face up to $250K fine

From The Toronto Star:

The new penalties for private career colleges start with fines of $250 to $1,000 for first offences, and can escalate with repeat offences to a maximum of $250,000.

Colleges and Universities Minister John Milloy says the government will also appoint new provincial offences officers to inspect the 580 private career college campuses in Ontario.

There will also be a public relations campaign to help students choose a government-approved private career college program before enrolling.

First Nations women and PSE in Canada

Statistics Canada has released the latest edition of its online publication Education Matters: Insights on Education, Learning and Training in Canada. It contains two articles on the participation of First Nations women in post-secondary education. It also includes a new fact sheet from the Pan-Canadian Education Indicators Program entitled "Post-secondary Enrollment and Graduation".

From the Statistics Canada website:

"First Nations women and post-secondary education in Canada: Snapshots from the census" explores the post-secondary educational attainment of First Nations women in Canada. While many do not complete high school, there is evidence that First Nations women return to school later in life and as such, have a different path to post secondary education than women in the overall Canadian population.

"First Nations women and post-secondary education: Findings from the 2006 Aboriginal Peoples Survey" finds that 6 in 10 off-reserve First Nations women aged 25 to 64 who had taken post-secondary education had applied for financial assistance to pursue their studies. The vast majority of those who had applied reported having received some form of funding and of those, three-quarters completed their post-secondary studies.

Ranking of Canada's top research universities

Research Infosource Inc., a science and technology consulting firm, has released its latest ranking of Canada's top 50 research universities. The ranking is based on sponsored research income in 2008. Sponsored research income at the top 50 ranked institutions grew by 6 per cent in the 2008 fiscal year. The University of Toronto was far out ahead of the others with $844.9M in sponsored research income. The UofT was followed by the University of Alberta ($491.7M) and the University of British Columbia ($470.1M).

Atlantic universities play key economic role

Association of Atlantic Universities Executive Director Peter Halpin writing in the Moncton Times & Transcript:

Between 1991 and 2007, 232,800 net jobs were created in Atlantic Canada for workers with a post-secondary education. During the same period, over 70,000 net jobs were eliminated for workers without post-secondary education.

During this period, according to Statistics Canada, the percentage of Atlantic Canada's workforce between the ages of 25-44, who attained a university education, increased from 15 to 24 per cent.

The future labour market demand for those with a university education and those seeking that credential will grow by leaps and bounds.

It is well understood by students and life-long learners that growing knowledge economy jobs demand, at a minimum, a Bachelors degree, and, more and more, a post-graduate degree.

These facts, in-part, explain why enrolments in Atlantic Canada's universities have begun to increase following four straight years of incremental decline.

Monday, 26 October, 2009

Baby goes to university for $137,013

From The Globe and Mail:

All of you new parents, you had better put away those celebratory cigars and start saving.

At a time when Canadians are grappling with high levels of credit card debt, soaring house prices and troubling pension trends, it appears new Moms and Dads need to add skyrocketing higher education costs to their financial to-worry-about list.

In 18 years, when a baby born today goes to university to start an undergraduate degree, the total cost of a four-year program for a student living away from home will be $137,013, according to a recent Toronto-Dominion Bank Financial Group report. The bill for students still bunking with their parents will be a slightly-less-shocking $101,426.

Friday, 23 October, 2009

Gumdrops: A mix of post-secondary miscellany

- An Israeli blockade continues to prohibit hundreds of Palestinian students in Gaza from traveling to universities abroad

- Canada's Big 5 universities appear to have exported their ideas (e.g., give more/most public research funding to them) across the pond

- As in Canada, inflation has declined in the U.S. but post-secondary education costs continue their unabated ascent

- I officially nominate this story for "The Most Shocking Post-Secondary Education News Story of The Year" award

- I'm traveling to Toronto today to attend the Prepared Minds, Prepared Places conference. Over the weekend, I'll be participating in the 1st Community Access Challenge as a member of the YMCA-YWCA Northeast Avalon Charrette Team

Thursday, 22 October, 2009

Call for contributions: 2010 IMHE conference

The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development’s Programme on Institutional Management in Higher Education has released a call for contributions for its next General Conference to be held at the OECD headquarters in Paris September 13-15 next year. The theme of the conference is Higher Education in a World Changed Utterly: Doing More with Less. The deadline for submissions is January 4.

University enrollment up across Canada

According to the Association of Universities and Colleges of Canada's preliminary fall enrollment count, there are about 38,000 additional full-time students enrolled at universities across Canada this year. The AUCC's count indicates that full-time enrollment has grown to 870,000 students, with 733,500 enrolled in undergraduate programs and 136,500 enrolled in graduate programs.

Wednesday, 21 October, 2009

Most expensive U.S. colleges for 2009-2010

The Top Ten:

1. Sarah Lawrence College $54,410
2. New York University $51,991
3. The George Washington University $51,730
4. Bates College $51,300
5. Skidmore College $51,196
6. Johns Hopkins University $51,190
7. Georgetown University $51,122
8. Connecticut College $51,115
9. Harvey Mudd College $51,037
10. Vassar College $50,875

Further details here at the Campus Grotto.

UK university enrollment up

As reported by the BBC News:

The number of UK students who took up a place at university this autumn rose 6% on the previous year, figures show.

Statistics from the admissions service, Ucas, showed a total of 477,277 students started degree courses in 2009, compared with 451,871 in 2008.

The rise, partly due to the recession, was expected and the government had announced in July that 10,000 extra places would be made available.

But with applications at record levels, many students have been disappointed.

Applications this year were up on last year by 50,935 people - about 10% - so the proportion of applicants failing to get a place has risen.

Tuesday, 20 October, 2009

Ontario has the highest tuition fees in Canada

From Statistics Canada:

Canadian full-time students in undergraduate programs faced the same increase in tuition fees (+3.6%) for the 2009/2010 academic year as they did a year earlier.

On average, undergraduate students paid $4,917 in tuition fees in 2009/2010, compared with $4,747 in 2008/2009.

In comparison, between August 2008 and August 2009, inflation as measured by the Consumer Price Index (CPI) declined 0.8%. During the same 12-month period in the previous year, the CPI rose 3.5%.

Tuition fees increased in all but three provinces this fall. Fees remained unchanged in Newfoundland and Labrador and New Brunswick, while they declined in Nova Scotia (-3.1%) for a second year in a row.

Two provinces ended freezes on tuition fees with increases — Manitoba (+4.3%) and Saskatchewan (+3.4%). Elsewhere, tuition fee increases ranged from 2.0% in British Columbia to 5.0% in Ontario. Ontario's increase was the limit legislated by the Ontario government.

On average, undergraduate students in Ontario also paid the highest fees in Canada at $5,951. Students in Nova Scotia had the second-highest average tuition fees at $5,696.

Quebec undergrads continued to pay the lowest fees, averaging $2,272, followed by those in Newfoundland and Labrador at $2,619.

How Canada squandered its education advantage

Rotman School of Management Dean Roger Martin writing in The Toronto Star today:

Canada – and Ontario, in particular – has moved from a position of strength to one of weakness. We once led the world in our commitment to education investment. No longer. Our health-care system briefly lost its lead in public health-care spending in 1995, but regained approximate parity with the U.S. in 2000 and has maintained it ever since. In contrast, by 2002 education spending in Canada had fallen a full 17 per cent behind the U.S. In Ontario, [Mike] Harris turned the 4 per cent advantage in per capita spending that he inherited into a 25 per cent disadvantage by the end of his term in 2002.

We've been off the path for 15 years. It would now take an additional spending of $21 billion across all levels of government in Canada to return to the per-capita spending position we enjoyed relative to the United States in 1995. Ontario would require $10 billion a year, consuming nearly half of the $21 billion even though only 39 per cent of the population lives here.

The great tragedy is that Canada and its provinces, especially Ontario, shifted dramatically away from a historical competitive advantage in education just as the world was finally entering the long-promised knowledge economy. There had been talk about such a shift for years, if not decades, but by 1995, it was utterly clear that the 21st century was going to be driven by knowledge and the education systems that fuel it. Right at that pivotal moment, Canada bailed. It's not too late to repair the damage, but it soon will be.

Monday, 19 October, 2009

Debating university tenure

The October-November 2009 issue of Academic Matters, a publication of the Ontario Confederation of University Faculty Associations, features a series of articles on tenure at Canada's universities.

Those tackling the tenure debate include Michiel Horn, Michael Bliss, Mark Kingwell, Pat Finn, Sandra Acker, James Soto Antony and Ruby Hayden.

Saturday, 17 October, 2009

Canadian post-secondary participation rates

John Ivison writing about Canadian post-secondary education in The National Post:

The statistics are quite shocking -- all the more so for having received such scant attention. Canada has long prided itself on having the highest post-secondary participation rate in the OECD. But, closer inspection reveals that those participation rates are driven overwhelmingly by high community college attendance rates. The latest OECD numbers for 2007 suggest that when it comes to "tertiary type A" graduation rates (most commonly universities), Canada ranked 20th of 24 countries, ahead of only Hungary, Austria, Germany and Greece. Countries such as Poland, Portugal and the Slovak Republic left Canada far in their wake.

Friday, 16 October, 2009

Presentation at the edge

I was a presenter this morning at the 2009 Edge Conference, which is hosted by MemorialU's Faculty of Education. I did this presentation, titled We All Need to Complete High School: Student Perspectives on Improving Their Progress to Graduation, with my colleagues Dr. Morgan Gardner and Mr. Brian Vardy. Our conference paper was based on research we carried out with fourth year ("Level IV") senior high school students from October 2008 to June 2009. A copy of the report of this research project, We Know What We Need to Graduate: Student Perspectives on Their Fourth Year in Senior High School, is available for download here in .pdf format.

Thursday, 15 October, 2009

Enrolment up at Atlantic universities

As reported by The Canadian Press:

Universities in Atlantic Canada are reporting higher enrolment figures for the 2009-10 school year.

The Association of Atlantic Universities said Thursday its preliminary survey shows universities had a 1.5 per cent increase in undergraduate enrolment.

It says that ends a four year decline.

The association said universities are also reporting an increase in graduate students, up by 5.4 per cent, and what it describes as a "remarkable" jump in international students, which is up by 16.5 per cent.

Trends in faculty hiring at Ontario universities

From the Ontario Confederation of University Faculty Associations:

Ontario urgently needs to hire more university faculty to maintain the quality of higher education, says a report released today by The Ontario Confederation of University Faculty Associations (OCUFA). The study - Trends in Faculty Hiring at Ontario Universities - finds that Ontario lags its peers in Canada and the United States in its student-to-faculty ratio, a key indicator of educational quality.
. . .

Tracking student enrolment and faculty hiring since the Government of Ontario's 2005 Reaching Higher plan, the report finds that the growth of the student population has outstripped the rate of new faculty hiring. Ontario now has the highest student-to-faculty ratio in Canada, at 26:1. To lower the ratio to the national average, more than 5,000 new professors are needed. To match ratios in peer universities in the Unites States, over 9,000 new faculty hires will be required.

The report, part of OCUFA's ongoing Trends in Higher Education research series, also finds that universities have not met their hiring targets as outlined in their Multi-Year Accountability Agreements (MYAAs) with the Government of Ontario. In addition, universities are relying more on contractually limited teaching appointments (CLTAs) to meet their hiring needs.

The full report is online here in .pdf format.

Facebook 'cuts student drop-outs'

From the BBC News:

Social networking websites such as Facebook are helping to reduce college drop-out rates, it is claimed.

Gloucestershire College says social networking is used to keep students informed and in touch with staff.

"There has been a significant improvement in retention," says media curriculum manager, Perry Perrott.

Using such teenager-friendly communication tools has a "positive effect on motivation", says the government's technology agency, Becta.

"We're embracing it rather than fighting it," says Mr Perrott. He says Facebook pages for individual courses help the students to bond with each other, work together as a team and maintain their connection with staff.

Wednesday, 14 October, 2009

Helping students navigate a path to PSE

Last month, the U.S. Institute of Education Sciences produced a guide designed to help teachers, counselors, and school administrators develop practices to increase access to post-secondary education for students who face barriers.

The guide, titled Helping Students Navigate the Path to College: What High Schools Can Do, contains a variety of research-based strategies for assisting students and increasing their likelihood of going on to college or university. While the guide is situated in the U.S. context, many of the ideas are adaptable for use by Canadian schools.

The guide may be downloaded here in .pdf format.

Education on the edge

Starting today, MemorialU's Faculty of Education is hosting Edge 2009: An International Conference on Inspiration and Innovation in Teaching and Teacher Education.

See here for full details.

Tuesday, 13 October, 2009

APA style guide corrections

From Inside Higher Ed:

Scholars turn to style manuals for guidance in authoring error-free manuscripts, but what happens when the manual itself is laden with errors?

Users of the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association are trying to answer that question now, after the APA last week released dozens of corrections to the first printing of the book’s sixth edition. In addition to being used in psychology, the manual is also used in sociology, economics, business, nursing and justice administration, among other fields.

“It’s egregious,” said John Foubert, an associate professor of education at Oklahoma State University, who bought two copies of the book – one for his office and one for home – when it was released in July. “These are the standards for how we write our manuscripts and how our students write their papers …. The irony is so thick.”

The corrections include four pages of “nonsignificant typographical errors” and five pages correcting errors in content and problems with sample papers in the book.

Tuesday this and that

If you're a new Canadian, 'you go to university':
For anyone who has visited a campus in recent years, the growing presence of new Canadians will come as no surprise. Canada is becoming increasingly diverse and nowhere is that diversity more evident than in the youngest members of the population, a rising number of whom are drawn to higher education.
A UK study shows that children educated at home are at a severe disadvantage. "The percentage of home-educated children who are not in employment, education or training [known as 'neets'] is higher than in the national population".

The University of Toronto Students' Union has posted a video on-line to promote its "drop fees" campaign.

The Sugarhill Gang released Rapper's Delight in October 1979. Thirty years after that first hip hop release, university students are studying Hip-Hop Music and Culture.

Monday, 12 October, 2009

Student loans: The new indentured servitude

From The Atlantic Monthly:

Jeffrey Williams, in Dissent Magazine, wrote Student Debt and The Spirit of Indenture, provocatively referred to student loans as the new form of indentured servitude.

Why is this the new form of indentured servitude?

Williams gives some reasons: The prevalence of this debt, especially among the young and the poor/working classes, the transformation from a rounding error amount to a significant burden amount over the past 30 years, the length of term, the idea of mobility and "transport" to a job, debt secured not by property but by personhood, and limited legal recourse. All these characteristics are similar. The limited legal recourse is noteworthy here, since unlike most debt, it isn't dischargeable under bankruptcy, thus it doesn't have a natural protection for the consumer receiving credit.

Friday, 9 October, 2009

High incarceration rate among early school leavers

From The New York Times:

On any given day, about one in every 10 young male high school dropouts is in jail or juvenile detention, compared with one in 35 young male high school graduates, according to a new study of the effects of dropping out of school in an America where demand for low-skill workers is plunging.

The picture is even bleaker for African-Americans, with nearly one in four young black male dropouts incarcerated or otherwise institutionalized on an average day, the study said. That compares with about one in 14 young, male, white, Asian or Hispanic dropouts.

Researchers at Northeastern University used census and other government data to carry out the study, which tracks the employment, workplace, parenting and criminal justice experiences of young high school dropouts.

Thursday, 8 October, 2009

Canadian university policy given failing grade

Commentary on the Times Higher Education-QS World University rankings of the Top 200 World Universities from Stephen Murgatroyd:

In all of this rush to upgrade our institutions, we are in danger of losing sight of three things. The first is the fundamental nature of a university – a place where scholarship and imagination is nurtured and research enabled, with the discovering minds of academics helping the growing minds of students come nearer to the frontiers of knowledge. Not all of the “new” universities and none of the privates are engaged in research as a core of their beings as institutions. When this is absent or minimized, then the meaning of the “university” is devalued.

The second thing that is in danger of being lost is the conception of quality. Most quality assurance processes in Canada, and I am directly engaged in several, focus on student protection and the assurance that the institution is capable of sustaining the offering of quality programs to students, thus giving emphasis to teaching and minimizing (and, in some jurisdictions, ignoring) the role of a university in terms of research or the engagement in community service.

The third thing we are in danger of losing sight of is our academic standing in the world. As we diversify the offering of degrees through a range of different institutions and de-emphasize research, we lower Canada’s profile in the world. While a few institutions make modest gains on the league tables, such as the Times Higher Education ranking, the “new” and private universities operate knowing that they will never make the ranking process, never mind the list.

Universities are complex places. They have a teaching function, a research function and a community building and service function. In the rush to have a better educated work-force for the knowledge economy, we may be in danger of diluting our resources and creating several different leagues of institutions that compete for resources, students, faculty and research funds. We are in danger of lowering our sights and missing the target: excellence.

Times-QS ranks top 200 universities in the world

The Times Higher Education has published the annual Times Higher Education-QS World University rankings of the "Top 200 World Universities". The Globe and Mail's Elizabeth Church notes the following:

The results, released Thursday by the Times Higher Education-QS World University Rankings , saw three Canadian schools – McGill, the University of Toronto and the University of Alberta – post improved results. The numbers also point to the increasing profile of campuses outside North America, especially those in Asia. It's a move that could foreshadow a shift in the pecking order of higher education, as countries such as Japan and South Korea direct money to developing elite institutions.

The full rankings are here on the Times Higher Education site.

Wednesday, 7 October, 2009

Reviewing the current issue of University Affairs

University Affairs has released its latest on-line edition and this installment includes a number of thought-provoking reads.

One of the articles reviews the demise of the Canada Millennium Scholarship Foundation. The Foundation has produced quite a bit of useful research on post-secondary student access and affordability in Canada in the years since its founding. As the article notes, this research was particularly unpopular with unnamed student organizations whose fixation on tuition fees and simplistic analysis preclude acceptance that, save very minor exceptions, access to higher education is determined by a multiplicity of factors beyond fees.

To mark its 50th Anniversary, this edition of University Affairs includes a number of articles on the past and future of higher education in Canada. This article by University of Western Ontario historian Alan MacEachern reviews how University Affairs magazine has evolved with the changing landscape of the university system over the past 50 years. If you like a good horror flick and don't mind some really graphic death scenes, then you definitely should not miss out on Alex Usher’s predictions for the future of Canadian universities in the 21st century.

Usher begins by repeating much of the vision of ApocalypseU that he has been proclaiming for some time. After the coming period of well-deserved massive cutbacks in public funding, Usher envisions that our public universities will eventually evolve into one of the following: 1) nothing (“not every university survived”), 2) undergraduate education factories, 3) pricy private institutions, or 4) graduate-level research institutions (i.e., the “Big 5” Canadian universities get their way).

In Usher’s future, teaching will be “done as much as possible by adjunct faculty” who carry on the age-old tradition of the university professor by teaching curriculum they found on the Internet between their shifts at McDonalds. The undergraduate experience will be “standardized across institutions” with public university education reduced to something resembling an on-line widget factory delivering a cookie cutter curriculum. Somewhere in here the Global University of Canada, powered by “educational quality assessment and control systems” and the English language, blasts off and . . . well . . . I’m not really sure what that part was about.

Canadian universities getting greener

From CanWest News:

An assessment of the environmental sustainability of colleges and universities across North America released Wednesday shows that Canadian schools are making headway in their efforts to go green.

The 2010 College Sustainability Report Card shows that the majority of the 17 Canadian universities included in the report have either improved their standing or have remained steady compared to last year's rating.

Tuesday, 6 October, 2009

Academic blogs: Connecting people and ideas

At the Canadian Congress of the Humanities and Social Sciences this past May, I moderated a panel on academic blogging during a Congress Career Corner session. The panel included Dr. Michael Barbour of Wayne State University, Carolyn Steele of York University, and my colleague Dr. Mary Stordy.

Video clips of the session have now been added to YouTube. These are catalogued here on the University Affairs website. Here's the introductory section with me saying "ah" a lot during the first couple of minutes:

I have also uploaded the presentation slides for the introduction to the session (here in .pdf format) so that those who are interested may have a closer look.

Monday, 5 October, 2009

SIFE Memorial advances to semi-finals of World Cup

Hurray for our side:

In the opening round competition of the Students in Free Enterprise (SIFE) World Cup the Memorial team has emerged victorious.

The opening round saw the team compete against the national champions from the United Kingdom, the Philippines, Vietnam and Egypt.

The semifinal competition takes place tomorrow morning, Tuesday, Oct. 6. SIFE Memorial will be competing against Albania, Kenya and Malaysia. The winner of the semi-final competition will be announced at approximately 8:45 a.m. (Newfoundland Standard Time), and the winners will immediately compete in the final round of the competition.

UK Tories offer discount on early loan repayment

From The Times Higher Education:

The Conservative Party has outlined radical plans to raise a £300 million “emergency fund” to support university expansion by encouraging graduates to pay back their loans early.

Under the plan, graduates would receive a 10 per cent discount on early repayments.

Any graduate who made a single repayment above £500 or chose to pay off their loan in full within the next three years would be eligible for the discount.

The move aims to quickly raise the £300 million needed to fund 10,000 additional university places next autumn to prevent a repeat of this year’s admissions scramble.

Chinese graduate students lose free tuition

From China Daily:

Most Chinese postgraduate students will be forced to pay their own tuition fees at Beijing's top universities from next year.

The Ministry of Education will cancel government-funded postgraduate programs at all 36 universities affiliated to the ministries in the capital.

It said the move is designed to enhance the quality of postgraduate education and encourage competition among students.

The ministry said it had trialed canceled tuition fees since 2006, and that it would now be expanded to include all universities supported by the central government across the country.

Students with an excellent academic record can receive scholarships that will cover tuition fees and also some research, the ministry said in a circular published on its website.

Hat tip to University World News

Almost all young Chinese immigrants have PSE

From the Ottawa Citizen:

An astonishing 88.3 per cent of young Chinese immigrants in Canada go to university — more than double the figure for young Canadians as a whole, according to a new study.

When community college was added to the mix, 98.3 per cent of young Chinese immigrants sought post-secondary education by the time they were 21 years old.

Friday, 2 October, 2009

URegina promises "a great job" within 6 months

Regina Leader-Post story:

A post-secondary education is no guarantee of success . . . or at least it wasn't until the University of Regina made a jaw-dropping announcement this week guaranteeing students "a great job" within six months of graduation.

The vision isn't as far-fetched as it sounds; 97 per cent of graduates already find work "in a career of their choice within six months", says U of R President Vianne Timmons. The university wants "to push this to 100 per cent", she says.

The UR Guarantee is the first program of its kind in Canada -- and it won't just be handed to students on a plate. As well as achieving academic success they'll be required to take part in a wide range of activities, from exchange programs and community service to intensive career counselling and networking, all the while building a transcript that will "set them apart from other job candidates". All 2009 undergraduate students with 30 or fewer credit hours are eligible for the program.

If students don't find work within six months of graduation, they'll be offered a bursary to cover another year's worth of 30 credit hours at the U of R to add courses to their resume, undergo further career coaching and make additional contacts with prospective employers.

Thursday, 1 October, 2009

Commercialization of intellectual property in Canadian higher education

From Statistics Canada:

Canadian universities and affiliated teaching hospitals reported more than $52 million as income from intellectual property in 2007, down 12% from 2006.

In 2007, researchers reported or disclosed 1,357 new inventions to Canadian universities and teaching hospitals, a number virtually unchanged from the previous year. There were 1,634 patent applications filed with educational institutions, up 13% from 2006.

What's happening in apprenticeship now

A new report from the Canadian Apprenticeship Forum – Forum canadien sur l’apprentissage (CAF-FCA), What’s Happening in Apprenticeship Now: Stakeholders’ Feedback on the Barriers to Apprenticeship, provides an overview of the results of a 2008 national survey of apprenticeship stakeholders (i.e., labour, industry, government sectors).

The survey was conducted to assess the perceived status of apprenticeship in Canada as well as the effectiveness of efforts to address barriers to accessing, maintaining, and successfully completing apprenticeship training.

The barriers stakeholders rated as their highest priority areas were lack of information and awareness of apprenticeship (38%), lack of resources to support apprenticeship (37%), and negative attitudes toward apprenticeship (35%).

The report notes that stakeholders consider enhancing apprenticeship’s profile in schools to be one of the best means of dispelling persistent myths and stereotypes and improving the image of a career in the skilled trades.

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

Saturday, 31 October, 2009

Thursday, 29 October, 2009

Wednesday, 28 October, 2009

Monday, 26 October, 2009

Friday, 23 October, 2009

Thursday, 22 October, 2009

Wednesday, 21 October, 2009

Tuesday, 20 October, 2009

Monday, 19 October, 2009

Saturday, 17 October, 2009

Friday, 16 October, 2009

Thursday, 15 October, 2009

Wednesday, 14 October, 2009

Tuesday, 13 October, 2009

Monday, 12 October, 2009

Friday, 9 October, 2009

Thursday, 8 October, 2009

Wednesday, 7 October, 2009

Tuesday, 6 October, 2009

Monday, 5 October, 2009

Friday, 2 October, 2009

Thursday, 1 October, 2009

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