From 'Fly', a track from The Tragically Hip's 2006 World Container album:
There’s Mistaken Point, Newfoundland
There’s Moonbeam, Ontari-ari-o
There are places I’ve never been
and always wanted to go
I fly, cause woe betide a guy who just lives to fight
Fly, love is to try and die trying
From The Globe and Mail:
David Noble, one of North America's most prominent critics of the corporatization of academia and a groundbreaking researcher on the influence of technology on society, died Monday evening at age 65. He passed away in hospital unexpectedly of natural causes with his family at his side, friends said.Additional stories about Dr. Noble's passing from CounterPunch and The Toronto Star.
Prof. Noble rose to prominence for his critiques of technological automation, which he argued had been a method of depriving workers of power. He worked at the Massachusettes Institute of Technology and later at York University in Toronto, where he quickly became known for his political activism.
The latest issue of the Canadian Journal of Higher Education, a special issue on higher education and social statistics, features an article which examines the impact of parental educational attainment on university participation and persistence. The abstract:
Research in the United States shows that American first-generation students (FGS) are less likely to attend university than students whose parents are college graduates (NFGS). Furthermore, those among American FGS who undertake a bachelor degree would have to overcome, throughout their college experience, obstacles related to their family’s background. Are the Canadian FGS experiencing the same educational disadvantages than their American counterparts? Using longitudinal data from Youth in Transition Survey (YITS), conducted from 2000 to 2005, this paper shows that, as seen in the American studies, Canadian FGS are less likely to attend university than NFGS. However, there is no difference in regards to academic persistence. FGS and NFGS have the same probability of obtaining a bachelor degree.The full text of the article, titled Les étudiants de première génération dans les universités : l’accès et la persévérance aux études au Canada, may be downloaded here in .pdf format.
From the Association of Commonwealth Universities:
Results of a recent survey of Commonwealth universities reveal that the purchasing power of the average academic in South Africa is now higher than those in Canada, the UK and New Zealand. South African academics earn on average only 6% less than their counterparts in Australia, the top-ranked country, when cost of living is taken into account.
The differences in average salaries between the countries has reduced, pointing to increased international competition for academic staff, as well as efforts within individual countries to improve academic salary levels. The rate of growth in Canada, the UK and New Zealand has been higher than in Australia since the last survey – South Africa saw the highest rate of growth, at 51% since 2006-2007.
The survey, the seventh undertaken by the Association of Commonwealth Universities (ACU), looks at academic salary scales and associated benefits in 46 institutions across seven Commonwealth countries: Australia, Canada, Malaysia, New Zealand, Singapore, South Africa, and the United Kingdom.
From Statistics Canada:
Total research and development (R&D) spending intentions in Canada are anticipated to amount to $29.2 billion in 2010, down 0.6% from preliminary R&D expenditures for 2009.
The majority of 2010 intended R&D spending, $14.8 billion (51%), is expected to be spent by companies in the business enterprise sector. This represents a 2.6% decrease from 2009.
Spending on R&D by the higher education sector is anticipated to reach $11.2 billion in 2010, representing 38% of total spending. This is a 1% increase in R&D spending over 2009.
Joe Strummer, co-founder of The Clash, died suddenly on this date, December 22, in 2002. Leigh and I listened to our Clash albums continuously during that Christmas in Toronto. I remember it very clearly as it was our first Christmas away from our families in Newfoundland and we were both terribly homesick.
Student attrition's rural-urban divide. A new study from the Measuring the Effectiveness of Student Aid project reports that post-secondary students from rural and smaller urban settlements are significantly more likely to leave their programs before graduating compared students from larger urban centers. The paper, Large Urban, Small Urban and Rural Students, is available for download here in .pdf format.
McGill MBA students ‘left out to dry’. Another day, another story on Quebec's continuing tuition fee debate:
Last spring, McGill announced plans to self-fund its MBA program by raising tuition to $29,500 a year from $1,700. Michelle Courchesne, Quebec’s education minister at the time, retaliated swiftly, threatening to claw back $28,000 a student in other subsidies to keep McGill on par with the province’s other schools.Political origins of performance funding. The Community College Research Center has released a working paper on the origins of performance funding in six U.S. states. The authors "examine the supporters and opponents of performance funding, their beliefs and interests, how performance funding came to be identified as a policy option, and the political openings that allowed advocates of performance funding to place it on the government decision agenda." Download the paper here in .pdf format.
There is an oversupply of PhDs. Although a doctorate is designed as training for a job in academia, the number of PhD positions is unrelated to the number of job openings. Meanwhile, business leaders complain about shortages of high-level skills, suggesting PhDs are not teaching the right things. The fiercest critics compare research doctorates to Ponzi or pyramid schemes.
Statistics Canada has released a report on labour market outcomes (i.e., employment, earnings) of Canadian youth 1-2 years and 5-6 years after they leave school (full-time studies). The report utilized data from the Youth in Transition Survey (YITS) Cohort B which started in 2000 with surveys of youth aged 18 to 20. This cohort was surveyed every two years from 2000 to 2008, and in the most recent round of surveys the respondents were aged 26 to 28.
One of the key questions examined in the report, titled Labour Market Experiences of Youth After Leaving School: Exploring the Effect of Educational Pathways Over Time, is how taking time off after high school impacts youth labour market outcomes. In their examination, the authors of the report compare outcomes for youth who enter post-secondary programs directly after high school with other youth, referred to as 'gappers', who take a pause from educational pursuits for some amount of 'gap' time between high school and post-secondary education. Here's a summary of the report's findings in this area:
By and large, youth who entered directly into the post-secondary system had higher average employment rates and earnings, both initially and several years after leaving school. However, this descriptive finding does not remain consistent in the multivariate models once other pertinent factors are taken into account. For example, with regard to the university educated, at the initial time-point, there were no employment differences between university Gappers and Non-gappers; however, by the second time point, youth who had delayed going to university were significantly more likely to be employed for a full year than those who had gone directly after high school. The exact reason for this finding is unclear; however, some additional descriptive analyses (not shown) suggests that the reason may partly be related to the fact that university-educated Gappers worked more hours, on average, in high school. On the one hand, working in high school may have led to their delay in going on to post-secondary education; on the other hand, this early labour market experience may have proved valuable for later employment once they graduated from university.The full report may be accessed on-line here.
With respect to earnings, when considering all educational pathways, initially the university advantage in the labour market was only afforded to youth who went directly to university following high school graduation. Multivariate models show that initially, Gappers with university degrees did not earn significantly more than youth without any post-secondary education credential; this includes youth who never finished high school. Thus, it appears that taking time off does matter, but the advantage in early entry into formal education beyond secondary school and the labour market becomes less important than professional experience over time.
From University World News:
Scottish universities will charge more for tuition fees to students from the rest of the UK, in order to top up funds for universities, Michael Russell, the Education Secretary, announced on Friday. But students from Scotland will continue to enjoy free tuition.
EQUNET is an independent research and networking project with a goal of increasing access to higher education for marginalized and non-traditional groups in Europe. Its first report reviews definitions, theories, and approaches to the issue of equitable access and provides a broad overview of the state of equity in access to higher education across European countries. The recently released report covers:
In England, acquiescence to the argument that university represents a private good accruing to the individual has supported the current position of a politically agreed tripling of university tuition fees, compounding the effect of severe cuts to universities’ teaching grants.
A UK coalition government has approved in principle sharp rises in tuition fees, and in response current and future students and lecturers have protested widely, illustrating the emphatic emotional response to such a decision. This journal however seeks sober and balanced evidence and scholarly argument, on the possible effects of these changes, and similar changes to higher education across the globe. We seek international evidence – as US state funds run dry; as the introduction of tuition fees in areas of Germany begins to take effect; as some Euro-zone nations prepare to enter protracted periods of austerity in public spending; and as global economic pressures create chaos and uncertainty for all.
International papers are invited from policy makers, researchers, academics and practitioners that address the themes that will be explored in a special issue of Widening Participation and Lifelong Learning to be published in Spring 2011 to coincide with the release of the United Kingdom Higher Education White Paper.
Papers should be between 4000 and 6000 words in length, and associated abstracts should be between 100 and 200 words in length.
Submissions should be sent electronically to wpll-journal@open.ac.uk and include full contact details of the lead author.
Passed peacefully away on December 13, 2010, surrounded by his family, Dr. David Dibbon, aged 52 years. Left to celebrate his life, his soul mate and wife, Janice (Cooper) and his precious angels, Katherine and Lauren; parents Calvin and Florence Dibbon; father and mother-in-law John and Tillie Cooper; brother-in-law Ken Cooper and his wife Cindy Eberhardt; as well as a number of aunts, uncles and other relatives. David also leaves behind his colleagues and friends within the education community, particularly those at Memorial University's Faculty of Education. David will be greatly missed by an incredible network of friends around the world whose lives he touched. Resting at Carnell's Funeral Home, 329 Freshwater Rd. on Tuesday and Wednesday, December 14 and 15, 2010 from 2-4 and 7-9. At David's request, cremation has taken place. Funeral service from the Salvation Army Temple on Torbay Rd. on Thursday, December 16, 2010 at 11:00 a.m. In lieu of flowers, donations in David's memory may be made to Memorial University - Dr. David Dibbon Memorial Fund. The family thanks Dr. Kirsty Tompkins and her team for their care and support during David's illness. To send a message of condolence or to sign the memorial guest book please visit www.carnells.com.
Memorial University's flags will be lowered on Thursday, Dec. 16, from 10 a.m. until 1 p.m., to mark the passing of Dr. David Dibbon, dean of the Faculty of Education. Funeral service will take place at the Salvation Army Temple on Torbay Rd. in St. John's on Thursday, Dec. 16, at 11 a.m. A university procession will be convened for the funeral service. To accommodate those wishing to participate in the university procession, the Gown Room, located in PE-1007, will be open Wednesday, Dec. 15, from 1-5 p.m. for the distribution of academic dress. The university will provide a black gown and university hood to those who hold a degree. Those who do not hold a degree will be provided with a black gown. The procession will form at the Salvation Army Temple no later than 10:35 a.m. The procession will begin at 10:50 a.m. Individuals arriving after this time will be seated as space is available. The procession will be organized and led by Prof. Donna Walsh of the Department of English Language and Literature.
Statistics Canada has released updated data on registrations and completions in registered apprenticeship training programs. Apprenticeship registrations in Canada increased to 390,705 in 2008, about 9% over the previous year. The 10-year trend is plotted below.
In Newfoundland and Labrador, registrations increased to 5,910 in 2008 -- up about 3% from the previous year. The 10-year trend is shown below. I understand that the bulge in the middle of the figure was created when the definition of a registered apprentice in the province was briefly changed (or something to that effect).
The next two figures provide the 10-year trend in apprenticeship completions for Canada as a whole and for Newfoundland and Labrador. Between 2007 and 2008, completions increased by 19% in Canada and by over 18% in the province.
Good news on the nursing education front:
Between 2005 and 2009, Canada gained just more than 27,000 nurses, bringing the total regulated nursing workforce to approximately 348,500, according to a new report released today by the Canadian Institute for Health Information (CIHI). This represents an increase of 9% in the number of working nurses over five years. In comparison, the Canadian population grew by 5% over the same period.Still lots of work to do in this area of course, but I'd like to give a special shout out to my former colleagues in the Ontario Ministry of Training, Colleges, and Universities who I worked with on this file, especially Nelsa and Barbara. Bravo you two!
CIHI’s report, Regulated Nurses: Canadian Trends, 2005 to 2009, examines supply and workforce trends for Canada’s largest group of health care professionals at the national, provincial and health region levels. Three-quarters of the Canadian nursing workforce is made up of registered nurses (RNs), followed by licensed practical nurses (LPNs) and registered psychiatric nurses (RPNs). RPNs are regulated exclusively in the four Western provinces and one territory (since 2009).
Over the past five years, growth in the RN and LPN workforces has exceeded the rate of growth of the Canadian population, while growth in the RPN workforce has kept pace with population growth in the western provinces they serve. However, when examining the workforce of registered nurses, for which longer-term data is available, CIHI figures show there are actually fewer registered nurses today relative to the size of the population than there were 20 years ago. In 1992, there were 824 RNs for every 100,000 Canadians, compared to 789 per 100,000 in 2009.
From The Guardian:
A 20-year-old student underwent a three-hour operation to treat bleeding on the brain last night after being hit on the head by a police truncheon, according to his mother.
Alfie Meadows is said to have fallen unconscious on the way to hospital after being struck as he tried to leave an area outside Westminster Abbey during the tuition fee protests in central London. The incident has been referred to the Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC).
Meadows was among 43 protesters and six police offices who were taken to hospital for injuries. Another six officers had minor injuries.
The Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), developed by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, provides a snapshot of the extent to which youth (15-year olds) have acquired essential knowledge and skills in reading, math, and science. This assessment is carried out every three years and the latest results of the international survey were released on Tuesday.
The PISA results enable us to compare the educational attainment of Canadian youth to that of youth in other countries. They are also used to make inter-provincial comparisons. That way, we can have a sense of how our education systems are faring in comparison to competitor nations and provinces. These results are also informative because performance in secondary school is a key determinant of subsequent participation and performance in post-secondary programs.
While the 2009 PISA results show Canada's ranking relative to other countries declining somewhat, this occurred because other countries improved while Canada's results stayed statistically similar to previous PISA results. Overall, Canada continues to fare very well in comparison to countries such as the United States and United Kingdom. For more on the comparatively poor performance of these countries, see this New York Times story titled Western Nations React to Poor Education Results.
The 2009 PISA results show considerable variation in performance between youth across the Canadian provinces in the areas of reading, math, and science. Here in Newfoundland and Labrador, students performed below the Canadian average in all three areas. In addition, the scores for Newfoundland and Labrador also declined in all three areas relative to the 2006 PISA results.
For much more in the way of detail, download this .pdf document provided by Human Resources and Skills Development Canada, the Council of Ministers of Education, Canada, and Statistics Canada.
The Canadian Apprenticeship Forum has released a summary brief of its Transitioning to Apprenticeship for Youth dialogue held in October. The brief covers a number of key areas including best practices for connecting apprentices and employers, communicating the benefits of apprenticeships to employers, and youth apprenticeship transition programs. CAF has also released a series of accompanying videos, including this one below featuring Joel Michaud a 22-year-old certified carpenter from Calgary:
The latest on-line update from University Affairs includes a glowing review of the Pathways to Education program. This quote from Fiona Deller at the Higher Education Quality Council of Ontario captures the essence of program nicely:
It recognizes that challenges and barriers for underrepresented youth are multiple and complex. There isn’t just one barrier or one challenge that you can address with one intervention.
According to a recent Harris Decima poll, which appears to have been commissioned by the Canadian Association of University Teachers, most Canadians think that post-secondary education spending should be increased even if that results in higher taxes.
Reading this, I was reminded of the following passage from Johnstone and Marcucci's recent book titled Financing Higher Education Worldwide: Who Pays? Who Should Pay?:
. . . there is no point in arguing that there are not very great private benefits to higher education as well -- for which both parents and students themselves are manifestly willing and able to pay (albeit in some case only with the assistance of publicly sponsored loans). Certainly, if one were to ask students or their parents if they wish to pay for something that the public (i.e., the taxpayer) seems, or in the past has seemed, willing to pay for instead, the response is likely to be in the negative.
From The Globe and Mail:
Less reliable data resulting from the Conservatives' census changes will force university researchers to rely more on grants funded by the federal government, professors say.By the way, Stephen Harper's vision for Canada is also now available in "movie" format thanks to generous federal tax credits. For details, see the trailer below:
Researchers say they will no longer be able to reliably use data from the long-form census once it becomes voluntary in 2011. As a result, they will need more money from the federal government to buy substitute data from private organizations.
That will almost certainly mean that some research will never get funded and won't be able to proceed.
From The Toronto Star:
Only one in five low-income families in Canada has taken up the federal government’s offer of free money for their children’s post-secondary education.
Six years after the launch of the Canada Learning Bond, the families of only 212,000 children, or 19 per cent of those eligible, have taken advantage of the benefit, said a new study released this month by Toronto’s Omega Foundation.
Earlier this fall, my article titled Strategies for Widening Access in a Quasi-market Higher Education Environment: Recent Developments in Canada was accepted for publication in Higher Education. An electronic version of the article in currently available online, via Springer's Online First service, in advance of its print publication. Here's the abstract:
Under the Canadian constitution, authority over all levels of education, including higher education, rests with each of the individual provinces and territories. Although Canada has one of the highest levels of per capita educational attainment in the world, student access continues to be one of the most dominant policy areas in Canadian higher education. In recent years, a number of significant access policy reforms have been put in place by governments at the national and provincial levels. These initiatives are demonstrative of the continued and growing influence of marketization in Canada’s quasi-market system. This analysis provides some insight into these recent reforms and the influence that market principles have come to have in Canadian policies on both the supply-side and the demand-side of the country’s higher education sector.
The latest issue of the Canadian Apprenticeship Journal focuses on the issue of apprenticeship completion. It includes an article titled A Competing Risks Analysis of the Determinants of Low Completion Rates in the Canadian Apprenticeship System by Dr. Benoit Dostie of HEC Montréal. The abstract:
In this paper, we estimate the determinants of low (and slow) completion rates with a competing risk duration model using data from the 2007 National Apprenticeship Survey (NAS). This allows us to distinguish the impact of age and duration dependence on the probability of dropping out. We find that older apprentices are less likely to transit toward completion after age 28. We also find duration dependence to be positive, meaning that baseline transition probabilities to completion increase with apprenticeship duration. However, the positive effect dies out after five years of apprenticeship.The full paper may be downloaded here in .pdf format.
At a time of the year when we faculty are busy grading term papers, Tomorrow's Professor offers some pointers for improving student writing, courtesy of David Smit of Kansas State University:
If we are going to improve the writing of our students, we will need to require our students to write more often so that they can get sufficient practice; we will need to actually teach our students how to write the papers we require of them; and we will need to ensure that they get a range of experience writing a variety of genres so that they can see how complex writing is and how writing varies depending on the context, the genre, and the audience. Perhaps most importantly, we will need to design our writing instruction in ways that will help our students transfer what they have learned in school to the writing they do in the world outside of school.
