Adventures in Canadian Post-Secondary Education: February 2010

Friday, 26 February, 2010

Assessing the impact of noncredit college programs

New publication from the Community College Research Center:

Noncredit education is an important component of community college program offerings; however, the extent of student enrollment in noncredit programs is largely unknown because of lack of measurement. This paper makes the case for the training hour as the basic unit of measurement and proposes a taxonomy to classify and describe the range of noncredit activities delivered by community colleges.

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

Podcast on for-profit higher education

The latest podcast from the Center for Enrollment Research, Policy, and Practice at the University of Southern California features a discussion on for-profit higher education with Kevin Carey, policy director at the Washington, D.C. based think-tank Education Sector.

Carey discusses for-profit higher education sector growth, the role of for-profits in the U.S. system, as well as concerns about the for-profit sector's recruitment practices, student outcomes, and accountability. Click here to listen (podcast runs 30:56).

Thursday, 25 February, 2010

New PSE research from Statistics Canada

There are articles on both apprenticeship training and adult education in the latest issue of Statistics Canada's Education Matters: Insights on Education, Learning and Training in Canada.

The apprenticeship article, Trends in the Trades: Registered Apprenticeship Total Registrations, Completions and Certification, 1991 to 2007, reviews trends in apprenticeship training between 1991 and 2007 by major trade group, sex and age. As the chart below indicates, the share of apprenticeship certificates earned by Canadians over the age of 40 increased between 1992 and 2007.

Trends in adult education are highlighted in Changes in Participation in Adult Education and Training, 2002 and 2008. This article notes that participation in job-related education or training amongst working-age adult Canadians (age 25 to 64 years) increased from 30% in 2002 to 36% in 2008.

Wednesday, 24 February, 2010

Sweden ends free fees for most foreigners

I missed this earlier story on Sweden's university tuition fees:

The Swedish government announced on Friday that, beginning in the fall of 2011, foreign students from outside the European Union, the European Economic Area, and Switzerland will be charged tuition at Swedish universities.

As is still the case in a handful of other European countries, including much of Germany, tuition at public universities in Sweden is free and fully subsidized through taxes, with no distinction made for foreign students.

Tuesday, 23 February, 2010

Group calls for end of Quebec university fee freeze

From The Canadian Press:

A prominent group of Quebecers says the province needs to hike tuition fees.

The group includes former premier Lucien Bouchard - whose Parti Quebecois government froze tuition a decade-and-a-half ago at the lowest rates in Canada. But now Bouchard says universities are in trouble.

He and a group of other prominent Quebecers signed a declaration Tuesday calling for an increase in university tuition.

Northern Ireland panel pans tuition fee hike plans

From The Guardian:

As universities across the UK examine their finances and decide how to cope with funding cuts, a confidential report has revealed that the Northern Ireland fees review panel will recommend that the cap on tuition fees should not be lifted.

The review, chaired by Joanne Stuart, head of the Institute of Directors in Northern Ireland, recommends the retention of the cap on top-up fees and a detailed examination of the NUS alternative blueprint for funding, which proposes a progressive tax on graduates in place of a fee at the point of access.

The panel also says the introduction of fees has not led to a demonstrable improvement in the quality of "student experience" at university.

The document was leaked to the Gown, the independent student newspaper at Queen's University Belfast.

Monday, 22 February, 2010

Canadian Chamber of Commerce warns of labour shortage

Canadian Chamber of Commerce release:

The Canadian Chamber of Commerce warned today that the recession and rising unemployment may have diverted attention from labour shortages, but the shortages that existed before the recession will resurface after the economy fully recovers.

In a report entitled: Recession, Recovery and the Future Evolution of the Labour Market which was released to coincide with the federal/provincial/territorial meeting of Ministers responsible for Labour, the Canadian Chamber cautioned that an aging population and low birth rate will exert significant strains on Canada's labour market.
. . .

According to the report, demographic trends are not alone in exerting pressure on Canada's labour market. Globalization and technological advances are changing the composition of the workforce, transforming the nature of work, and reshaping the workplace. Our nation's competitiveness and continued prosperity will depend on maximizing the education and skill levels of Canadians, and on the ability of our workforce to create and apply ideas and knowledge.

To realize Canada's full potential and realize this country's promises, businesses of all sizes will need to tap Canada's pool of underutilized talent - older workers, Aboriginal peoples, the disabled and new immigrants to Canada. An affordable, accessible and high quality post-secondary education system will continue to be critical to ensuring a large and growing pool of skilled and knowledgeable workers to meet future labour market needs. For First Nations, Métis, Inuit, and the disabled, post-secondary education participation rates continue to be very low, and we need to do more to ensure affordable access to a high-quality education for them so they can effectively integrate and contribute in Canada's labour market.

Sciencefeed: Twitter for scientists

From University World News:

A scientific version of popular social-networking site Twitter has been launched. Called 'Sciencefeed', its owners describe it as a "real time micro-blogging tool designed for scientists".

The aim is to speed up international scientific debate, with rapid-fire exchanges of thought between informed academics. Where Twitter users may comment on the latest fashions or habits of their dog, Sciencefeed users are supposed to blog about cutting edge research discoveries.

Friday, 19 February, 2010

Federal funding for foreign credentials recognition

From Citizenship and Immigration Canada:

The Canadian Immigration Integration Project (CIIP), run by the Association of Canadian Community Colleges (ACCC), will receive additional funding of $15 million over the next three years to expand services in India, China and the Philippines. A new office will also open in London, United Kingdom, in the fall of 2011, which will also serve various Nordic and Arab states according to demand.

The CIIP, run by the ACCC, began offering orientation services in the Philippines, China and India on a pilot basis in early 2007. The existing sites, along with the London office, will offer access to more than 70% of the selected federal skilled workers around the world. These locations will also offer access to approximately 44% of selected provincial nominees around the world.

Thursday, 18 February, 2010

Navitas partnership may risk DalhousieU reputation

From Nova Scotia's UNews:

A proposed prep college for international students at Dalhousie University would put students at a disadvantage and jeopardize Dalhousie’s reputation, the school’s faculty members say.

The university’s Faculty Association sent an open letter to the Dalhousie community on Tuesday morning criticizing the school’s proposal to let Navitas, a private academic recruiting company, open an international college at the university.

“We’re worried that Navitas’ standards may not be the same as ours,” says Carrie Dawson, president-elect of the association.

The college would admit international students whose marks and English standards don’t meet regular Dalhousie standards.

If they pass those courses students can then take regular university classes.

Unlike Dalhousie, the company is private, which means it has a different focus than the university, Dawson says.

Wednesday, 17 February, 2010

UAlberta faculty agree to unpaid furlough days

From The Edmonton Journal:

University administrators are trying to make up a $59 million projected shortfall in the 2010-11 budget, a gap mainly caused by the provincial freeze in base operating grants. That freeze was confirmed in last week's provincial budget, but the ministry has still not released figures for the total operating grants.

Last week, academic staff voted 71 per cent in favour of accepting six furlough days. There was a 36-per-cent turnout. The furlough days are scheduled for the winter break between Dec. 24, 2010 and Jan. 4, 2011, when the university will be closed. Staff will see the pay reduction spread out over nine months.

Wednesday morning: Mixed thread

--> The possibility of a strike by Ontario community college instructors is up in the air pending a recount of a recent vote on an offer from the College Compensation and Appointments Council, the organization that bargains on behalf of Ontario's colleges.

--> Nova Scotia's education minister spoke to the Halifax Chamber of Commerce yesterday and expressed concern that the province may face a skills shortage in less than 5 years because many workers do not "possess sufficient skills, learning or experience for many of the positions that are coming vacant".

--> A new study from Universities UK, titled Active Ageing and Universities: Engaging Older Learners, outlines a variety of programs and approaches that universities can adopt to serve the growing numbers of potential older learners as well as the professionals who work on their behalf.

--> A recent U.S. study found that most Americans believe that their institutions of higher learning are preoccupied with financial matters to the detriment of the educational experience of students.

Tuesday, 16 February, 2010

New university admission avenue for College of the North Atlantic students

From the College of the North Atlantic:

A recent successful collaboration between Memorial University and College of the North Atlantic (CNA) is a new admissions route for Newfoundland and Labrador students. The request to add a new category of admissions to Memorial University’s Calendar was approved at the December Senate meeting. The new category of admissions is for applicants who successfully complete College of the North Atlantic’s one-year Comprehensive Arts and Science Transition Certificate program (CAS Transition program).

The CAS Transition program meets the needs of high school and Adult Basic Education graduates who are looking to improve their admission requirements for further post-secondary options or improve general employability skills. The program is designed to give students the opportunity to build on academic skills and improve learning habits and strategies needed to succeed in post-secondary programs.

The CAS Transition program was first introduced as a pilot project in 2005. It is currently offered at nine CNA campuses throughout the province, including the first time this year in St. John’s and Corner Brook, making it accessible to rural and urban students. The college has found that grads of this program have been successful in subsequent programs.

Monday, 15 February, 2010

Ontario continues career college clampdown

As reported by The Toronto Star:

The raid Friday on the Niagara-on-the-Lake Culinary School, a private career college that trained Indian students to be the chefs of tomorrow, came as the Star was investigating complaints from students ranging from bogus certification, to school officials holding on to their visas and work permits.

"The school has been shut down, and there will be fines coming," said Annette Phillips, spokeswoman for Training, Colleges and Universities Minister John Milloy.

Enforcement agents with the Private Career Colleges Branch and Canada Border Services Agency moved quickly after "determining the school was operating illegally," Phillips said.

Niagara-on-the-Lake Culinary School is operated by Geoffrey Bray-Cotton and his partner, Janice Bartley, an immigration consultant who teaches classes in nutrition and food safety, and also acts as the school's registrar and director of admissions.

Sunday, 14 February, 2010

Education under attack

From University World News:

Around the world, schools and universities have faced brutal military and political attacks in an increasing number of countries over the past three years, according to a new report published by Unesco. Since 2007 there have been thousands of reported cases of students, teachers, academics and other education staff being kidnapped, imprisoned, beaten, tortured, burned alive, shot or blown up by rebels, armies and repressive regimes.

The report, Education under Attack 2010, was written by University World News correspondent Brendan O'Malley and he says the sheer volume of incidents demonstrates that attacks on education are "by no means limited to supporters of the Taliban fighting in the hills of Afghanistan". Education and those involved have been subject to attacks in at least 31 countries in Africa, Asia, Latin America and Europe.

Saturday, 13 February, 2010

Call for Papers: e-Learning - The Horizon & Beyond

An International Conference on the Use of Technologies in K‐12 and Post‐Secondary Education
October 12‐15, 2010
Delta Hotel, St. John’s, Newfoundland & Labrador, CANADA
www.mun.ca/edge2010

Memorial University, Newfoundland and Labrador, invites you to the beautiful and exciting city of St. John’s to participate in an international dialogue on new, emerging, and immersive technologies in education. The edge conference will bring together researchers, university and college educators, cooperating teachers and teacher mentors, school district and ministry of education professionals, teacher association leaders, and graduate students to share research and innovative practices in the field of new and emerging technologies in education.

The conference program is intended to be broad, encompassing K‐12 and post‐secondary education and aims to provide a constructive forum for the presentation and discussion of new ideas, research and best practices relating to use of new and emerging technologies in education. Sessions will focus on the application of technologies in teaching, learning, research, and educational leadership. Themes will include such topics as Web 2.0 and 3.0, assistive technologies, fine arts and culture, skills training and trades education, second language, professional development, leadership, and aboriginal education.

Conference Themes and Topics

Submissions are welcome in these and related areas (note that these topics are indicative only):

Technologies for Teaching and Learning

current issues related to the scholarship of e‐teaching and e‐learning from primary to post-secondary educational contexts
innovative and inspiring research and practice
technologies in skills and trades education
technologies in aboriginal education
field experiences
second language education
Web 2.0 and 3.0
virtual schooling
assistive technologies

Policy and Leadership

using technology for administration and planning
professional learning
technology infrastructure
cost‐effectiveness
strategic planning
policy‐relevant research, theory, practice and administration
school/institutional improvement
ethics and equity
evaluation
educational programs and policies
succession planning

Who Should Participate?

We welcome submissions from researchers, college and university educators, school district staff, educational leaders, teacher‐practitioners, professional staff from teacher organizations, students and others who are interested in new and emerging educational technologies.

Presentation Format

Presentations may include empirical research, promising practices, policies, and models, or provocative commentaries and constructive critiques that support best practices and engage school district, college/university, and public policy leaders. You may have a research paper to present, or a multimedia presentation to give. You could propose to organize a panel of several presenters, or facilitate a session in which you profile an issue for a roundtable discussion.

Proposals

Submissions received on or before April 15th, 2010 will be reviewed by the conference program committee and proponents will be notified of acceptance of their proposals by May 15th, 2010. All presenters must register for the conference following notification of their accepted proposal. The attached template should be used for all proposal submissions and will also be available, along with regularly updated conference information, on the conference webpage at www.mun.ca/edge2010.

Friday, 12 February, 2010

How knowledge and skills at age 15 shape future lives in Canada

Earlier this week, the OECD released the results of a study conducted in partnership with Human Resources and Skills Development Canada.

This study used data from the Youth in Transition Survey (YITS) and the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) to assess the education and labour market outcomes of Canadian youth.

The Globe and Mail nicely summarized some of the results thus:

Students whose parents attended university are nearly five times more likely to be attending university at 21 than students whose parents did not. Parental income over $100,000 is also strongly predictive of post-secondary education. As is being female.

And yet the most important determinants are not preordained. The OECD reveals that time spent studying is more important than one's parents or gender. While homework says little about success in earlier grades, the high schooler who spends eight hours a week studying is five times more likely to reach university than a student who does none.

But by far the most important factor of all is reading proficiency. Students who scored in PISA's top category for reading skills were an astounding 20 times more likely to be in university than their peers with poor reading skills.

Here are a couple of other results of regression analyses that caught my eye:

When all factors were considered together, compared to students with no post-secondary education, students attending college were more likely to: Be living in Ontario.

When all factors were considered together, compared to students with no post-secondary education, students attending university were more likely to: Be living in Newfoundland and Labrador, Prince Edward Island, Nova Scotia or New Brunswick.

The full report, Pathways to Success - How knowledge and skills at age 15 shape future lives in Canada, can be downloaded from the OECD website here in .pdf format.

Thursday, 11 February, 2010

Researchers in Canadian higher education

Newly released from Statistics Canada:

In 2007 there were 142,950 researchers working in Canada, a 2.8% increase over the previous year and a 23% increase from five years earlier (2002) (Table 2-2).

Researchers are the predominant R&D personnel group. In 2007 doctoral students formed 72% of the 47,310 researchers in the higher education sector. Fifty-three percent of these doctoral students focused on natural science and engineering work, while the remaining 47% worked within the social sciences and humanities sector (Table 4-2).

Between 1998 and 2007 the count of researchers in the field of natural sciences and engineering increased 54%, while the number in social sciences and humanities increased 32% (Table 3-2).

Student loans impact time to doctoral degree

An article in the current issue of The Journal of Higher Education reports on a study which examined factors that affect time to completion of doctoral degrees. The results indicate that doctoral students who rely more heavily on student loans complete their degrees more quickly than students who don't. From the article:

This study confirmed that the type of financial support students receive in graduate school influences time to degree completion. Except for the social sciences, students with large loan amounts (greater than $50,000) took less time to graduate than non-borrowers in all fields of study, yet students with lower loan amounts completed degrees at the same pace in which non-borrowers did (except for one instance each, in education and physical sciences, where lower loan amounts were associated with shorter time to doctoral degree). This finding is rather surprising given the previous research findings that indicate that loan amount is negatively related to various student outcome measures, probably because of loan aversion behavior. However, the fact that having large loan amounts was related to shorter time to degree does not necessarily mean that doctoral students do not present similar loan aversion behavior as do undergraduates (e.g., Kim, 2007). Instead, this finding suggests that the students with large loan amounts may be more motivated to complete a degree and enter the workforce as quickly as possible so they do not accumulate additional debt and can begin to reduce the volume of loans by entering repayment earlier.

Hat tip to The Chronicle of Higher Education

Alberta budget cuts post-secondary spending

As reported by The Calgary Herald:

Students struggling with rising costs and tuition are upset at the province's decision to put no additional money into post-secondary institutions, saying they're being forced to shoulder more debt to go to school.

Advanced Education will face an overall six per cent cut to program expenses in the coming financial year, as $3.2 billion was earmarked for the department in Tuesday's provincial budget.

Students say it's an ominous forecast for colleges and universities that have already battled layoffs, program cuts and proposed tuition hikes amid tighter revenues and endowments.

Wednesday, 10 February, 2010

New Brunswick to create arms-length English, French community college systems

As reported by The Canadian Press:

The New Brunswick government is introducing legislation to create new English and French community college systems that will operate at an arms-length from government.

Post-Secondary Education Minister Donald Arseneault says the new corporations will allow the colleges to be more focused on students, and their programs more centred on the labour market.

He says they will qualify for a number of funding sources currently not available to them, including some federal money.

The province will continue to provide funding, but each corporation will have a board of governors that will have to provide a five-year strategic plan for government approval.

Tuesday, 9 February, 2010

U.S. universities dropping 'no loans' policies

There was much fanfare a few short years ago when a number of elite U.S. universities eliminated the loan component of institutional financial aid packages for all students regardless of their ability to pay. Recently both Dartmouth College and Williams College have reversed 'no loans' policies, while other universities are said to be tweaking student aid policies to cut costs in the face of reduced endowments.

Bi-National Learning and the Internet: Grassroots Experiments in Global Education

The Canadian Institute of Distance Education Research (CIDER) at Athabasca University periodically presents free and open CIDER sessions delivered over the Internet using Elluminate Live.

The next CIDER session will take place tomorrow, Wednesday, February 10, 11am-12pm Mountain Daylight Time. It will feature a presentation from Dr. William J. Egnatoff of Queen's University. The title of Dr. Egnatoff's presentation is Bi-National Learning and the Internet: Grassroots Experiments in Global Education. Here's the description:

Students at a French immersion high school in Ottawa and a school in Brazil exchange recipes, using a combination of French, English and Portuguese. The Brazilians discover they like poutine! Children in a rural Sierra Leonean village devastated during the civil war and a school in Mississauga collaborate to produce an online art gallery of pictures about what peace means to them. What do these examples and hundreds of thousands like them mean to the participants? What are the benefits and challenges of collaborating across countries and cultures in the design, implementation, and assessment of learning activities?

Such activities by their collaborative nature support global education, whether it emphasizes peace, social justice, citizenship, ecology, or any topic or issue of shared interest. Bill Egnatoff will present a conceptual framework for bi-national collaboration of this sort. He will illustrate the framework from relevant literature, through his experience in teaching a course called Global Education Through International Collaboration, and through his peace education design research with colleagues in Canada and Sierra Leone. That work includes experimentation with, and evaluation of, a variety of tools and systems to support collaboration among twinned school communities, pre-service and in-service teachers, teacher educators, and researchers.

Where:
On-line via Elluminate Live at:
https://sas.elluminate.com/m.jnlp?password=M.8B71B60F2931D029AC3837DC06B70D

Pre-Configuration:
Please ensure your Mac or PC is equipped with a microphone and speakers, so that you can use the VOIP functionality built into the E-Live web conferencing software. Please note that it is extremely important that you get your system set up prior to the start of the event. Information on installing the necessary software and configuring your computer is available at http://www.elluminate.com/support in the "First Time Users" section.

Monday, 8 February, 2010

$400,000 donation to support MUN grad students

TD Bank Financial Group has made a $400,000 donation to Memorial University of Newfoundland to support grad students in environment-related disciplines:

Graduate students pursuing environment-related studies will be eligible for new bursaries thanks to a donation from TD Bank Financial Group.

The $400,000 endowed donation, which was presented this week on Memorial’s St. John’s campus, will enable the university to advance its teaching and research strengths in multiple environment-related disciplines.

UK universities to cut thousands of jobs

As reported by The Guardian:

Universities across the country are preparing to axe thousands of teaching jobs, close campuses and ditch courses to cope with government funding cuts, the Guardian has learned.

Other plans include using post-graduates rather than professors for teaching and the delay of major building projects. The proposals have already provoked ballots for industrial action at a number of universities in the past week raising fears of strike action which could severely disrupt lectures and examinations.

The Guardian spoke to vice-chancellors and other senior staff at 25 universities, some of whom condemned the funding squeeze as "painful" and "insidious". They warned that UK universities were being pushed towards becoming US-style, quasi-privatised institutions.

The cuts are being put in place to cope with the announcement last week by the Higher Education Funding Council for England (Hefce) that £449m – equivalent to more than a 5% reduction nationally – would be stripped out of university budgets.

Sunday, 7 February, 2010

New Youth Retention and Attraction Strategy initiatives

Last week, the government of Newfoundland and Labrador added a couple of new planks to its Youth Retention and Attraction Strategy.

One of the new initiatives will provide $95,000 to Memorial University of Newfoundland’s international award-winning Students in Free Enterprise (SIFE) and Junior Achievement of Newfoundland and Labrador to "enhance entrepreneurship and improve financial literacy" among Newfoundland and Labrador youth.

The other initiative announced last week will provide $35,000 to "encourage young women to become involved in voting and political activity". The funding will go to Equal Voice’s Experiences program which fosters political literacy and encourages youth women to become politically active.

Saturday, 6 February, 2010

Heavy-handed censorship on university campuses

From The Ottawa Citizen

The most heavy-handed censorship tactics appear on university campuses, where pro-life student organizations are denied the status of official clubs. When pro-choice student leaders at Toronto’s York University learned that other students had organized a debate over the ethics of abortion, they promptly cancelled it, even though the event had been booked and the flyers printed. The president of York’s graduate students’ association said it was "not acceptable" to debate abortion because, in Canada, the "debate is over", in the sense that abortion is legal.

Universities are exactly the place where people should debate ethical and philosophical issues, so the impulse to ban anti-abortion speech is unsettling. To which the pro-choicers reply: Should we allow Ku Klux Kan members to "debate" black inferiority on campus? Should we allow neo-Nazis to come and say the Holocaust was a hoax?

Thus we get to the heart of the matter: In the minds of many pro-choice advocates, opposition to abortion is a radical political view. At the University of Victoria, the student government wants to marginalize pro-life groups because pro-life speech supposedly creates an atmosphere of "ambient violence". At Lakehead University in Thunder Bay, where there have been similar campaigns to shut down pro-life clubs, one student council leader said that pro-life students represent "the same mentality of those" who gun down abortion providers.

Friday, 5 February, 2010

People without jobs, jobs without people

On Wednesday, the Ontario Workforce Shortage Coalition released a report on challenges facing the workforce in Ontario. The report, People Without Jobs, Jobs Without People: Ontario's Labour Market Future, was prepared by former Seneca College president Dr. Rick Miner.

Dr. Miner writes about the combined impact of an aging population and an emerging knowledge economy, and proposes a number of remedies including increased immigration, boosting labour market participation rates amongst those under-represented, and, the toughest nut to crack, changing societal attitudes towards post-secondary education. In the absence of action, he predicts that 700,000 Ontarians will be unemployable by 2021 due to a lack of proper education and training. He says:

Without effective action, we face a future with large numbers of unskilled workers looking for jobs that require skills they do not possess, and a large number of jobs that will go unfilled. The time for action is now. It will take planning, hard work, cooperation, and difficult decisions to secure our future. An alternative outcome is simply unacceptable.

The words of yours truly, from my article on post-secondary access published last year in the Journal of Applied Research on Learning, are noted on pages 13 and 17 of the report. I especially liked the part where he says "Kirby is right".

You may download the report here in .pdf format.

Thursday, 4 February, 2010

Québec's francophone-anglophone education gap

According to the data in the 2006 Census of Canada, francophones in Québec are proportionally higher in number without any diploma than their anglophone counterparts and lower in number with a university degree.

Forty years after the major reforms of the Québec education system, with regard to those without a diploma, the gap between francophones and anglophones is clearly less pronounced in the youth population than the in oldest age groups – 19 percentage points for 75-year-olds and over versus 3.5 for the 25-34 age group, reflecting the catching up of francophones to anglophones.

However, the gap in university educational attainment between francophone and anglophone Quebecers – roughly 10 percentage points – is not less in the youth population than in the older age group. This is due to the fact that, despite the remarkable increase in university completion rates, francophones did not increase their education levels more than their Anglophone counterparts so that the relative gap between the two is the same in the younger age groups.

These findings were taken from an article published today in the Données sociodémographiques en bref bulletin released by the Institut de la statistique du Québec, which draws a cross-age-group portrait of the evolution of the educational attainment of the francophones and anglophones in Québec and Ontario.

Maritime student progression in university

Almost 80% of Maritime students remain enrolled at the same university a year after admission and almost 60% graduate within the first 6 years of entering a program, according to a report from the Maritime Provinces Higher Education Commission.

The report, Student Progression within University of First Entry: Persistence and Graduation, found that 3% of students who began studies in 2001 were still enrolled 6 years later and 39% had left university without completing a degree.

The report does not track the destinations of students who leave their first university, some of whom transfer to another institution to complete their studies. However, 19% of those who left after their first year, returned to the same institution within the next 5 years.

The report can be downloaded here in .pdf format.

Wednesday, 3 February, 2010

First NationsU funding cut imminent: Sask minister

From The Canadian Press:

The Saskatchewan government's warning that it could cut off funding to the First Nations University of Canada within days has put the future of the embattled school in question and left students hoping that it will survive.

Tuesday, 2 February, 2010

Gender gap in Ontario post-secondary education

The Higher Education Quality Council of Ontario has released a new summary of research on gender patterns in education and labour force participation and outcomes in Ontario. With respect to post-secondary education enrollments, the research summary notes the following:

Women make up 58% of students in undergraduate programs at Ontario universities and, while women have been the majority in undergraduate programs since the 1980s, growth in the gender gap has slowed in recent years.

53% of students in Ontario community college programs are women, and the college gender gap has remained relatively consistent over the past decade.

Women continue to be under-represented in apprenticeships, where they represent about 19% of overall registrations.

The full document, titled "What About the Boys?" An Overview of Gender Trends in Education and the Labour Market in Ontario, may be downloaded here in .pdf format.

Monday, 1 February, 2010

Reaching poor teachers: Sources of resistance

From Tomorrows-Professor:

Reaching poor teachers has been a daunting task. In my survey of self-report data (Lucas, 1994), less than one-third of 4,500 chairs who completed questionnaires reported any degree of success in motivating poor teachers. Based on my interviews and workshops with a large number of chairs, it seems they believe that improving teaching effectiveness is not their responsibility; they do not know how to help poor teachers become better; or they feel, sometimes based on painful experience, that any intervention would be resented.

Why is it that faculty who are not effective teachers are so resistant to change? A number of factors from research literature could explain this behavior. In a longitudinal study of 185 new faculty members at several comprehensive universities, Boice (1992) found that when student evaluations were disappointing, faculty explained by externalizing the blame. Poor ratings were seen to be the fault of unmotivated students, heavy teaching loads, and invalid rating systems. When faculty members externalize the blame for poor learning outcomes instead of accepting responsibility, they feel there is no reason to make changes in the ways in which they are teaching.

Based on Boice's findings on the teaching style of faculty in the late 1980s, some inferences can be made about the current teaching methods of the thousands of faculty members who were hired in the 1970s. Colleges and universities seemed to subscribe to the myth that if you knew your subject, you could teach it. This gave new teachers little help in becoming effective teachers. It is probable that, lacking guidance, large numbers of new faculty taught as they had been taught and settled into an approach that depended heavily upon lecture as the only way to teach, with no interaction with students. After becoming accustomed to this content-only approach, most faculty found it comfortable, and the style conformed to student expectations, if not their preferences.

Is poor student literacy on the rise?

Or is it the same as it ever was?:

Little or no grammar teaching, cellphone texting, social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter, all are being blamed for an increasingly unacceptable number of post-secondary students who can't write properly.

For years there's been a flood of anecdotal complaints from professors about what they say is the wretched state of English grammar coming from some of their students.

Now there seems to be some solid evidence.

Ontario's Waterloo University is one of the few post-secondary institutions in Canada to require the students they accept to pass an exam testing their English language skills.

Almost a third of those students are failing.