Adventures in Canadian Post-Secondary Education: February 2011

Monday, 28 February, 2011

Apprenticeable occupations in the economic downturn

The latest issue of Statistics Canada's Education Matters includes an article examining changes in employment in apprenticeable occupations between 2008 to 2010. The piece, Apprenticeable Occupations and the Employment Downturn in Canada, uses Labour Force Survey data to compare employment rates of workers in apprenticeable occupations based on a number of demographic characteristics including age, sex, and level of education. Some notable observations about employment in these occupations during the global economic downturn between October 2008 and October 2009 include the following:

apprenticeable occupations sustained greater employment losses (-5.7%) than other occupations (-1.3%) in the wake of the fall 2008 economic slowdown;
the economic downturn had the greatest impact on welders, exterior finishing occupations, machinists, carpenters, and heavy equipment and crane operators;
the biggest losses in apprenticeable occupations took place in British Columbia (-14.4%) and Quebec (-11.8%);
Atlantic Canada was the only region where employment in apprenticeable occupations increased during the period (5.6%); and
the decline in employment in apprenticeable occupations had a greater impact on workers under the age of 25 (-13.1%) than on the 55-and-over group (-0.5%), on men (-6.1%) than on women (-3.3%), and on workers born in Canada (-7.3%) than on immigrants (-0.8%).

Sunday, 27 February, 2011

Enrollment still climbing at Canadian universities

From The Canadian Press:

Canadian universities are bursting at the seams as enrolment continues to rise, and some university insiders worry schools won’t be able to handle the strain.

National enrolment numbers have reached a record high and experts predict they’ll keep rising over the next five years.

In Ontario, the province with the most universities, schools are poised for another boost in enrolment this fall.

The latest figures show the number of high school students applying to the province’s 20 universities has gone up 2.4 per cent over last year.

Saturday, 26 February, 2011

Saskatchewan considering expansion of degree-granting

Government of Saskatchewan news release:

In response to ongoing requests from post-secondary institutions and developments in post-secondary education elsewhere in Canada, the Government of Saskatchewan is launching a public consultation process to consider expanding degree granting status in Saskatchewan. As it stands now, only the University of Saskatchewan and the University of Regina can grant degrees other than theological degrees.

"We are working to ensure that Saskatchewan's post-secondary system is student-centred and characterized by excellence and inclusion," Advanced Education, Employment and Immigration Minister Rob Norris said. "With regard to inclusion, we want to determine if expanding degree-granting status to other institutions might benefit students by expanding the number of options open to them. In terms of excellence, we need to ensure that we have a broad and robust quality assurance process."

There are three components to the initiative. First, outside consultants will be recruited to help guide the project. Secondly, stakeholder and public input will be sought through broad consultations, and thirdly, quality standards will be developed through a quality assurance process.

Alberta, B.C., Ontario and the Maritimes have established agencies to review and approve new degree-granting programs according to established quality standards.

The consultations will invite input from the post-secondary education sector, including students, as well as all other interested parties. For more information, go to www.aeei.gov.sk.ca/degree-granting.

Friday, 25 February, 2011

Posters spark criminal investigation at UWaterloo

From the Canadian University Press:

Earlier this month, an anonymous attacker put posters up over the posters of female candidates depicting Nobel Prize-winning chemist and physicist Marie Curie. The posters read "THE TRUTH. The brightest woman this Earth ever created was Marie Curie, the mother of the nuclear bomb. You tell me if the plan of women leading men is still a good idea."

A fraudulent email with the poster attached said to be from UW president Feridun Hamdullahpur was also sent out and social media outlets were used to spread the sexist messages.

“On Feb. 9, in response to seeing the posters up around campus that denigrated women, they were taken down immediately by campus police,” said Ellen Rethore, associate vice-president of communications and public affairs for UW.

The university’s police service has launched a criminal investigation to determine the identity of the attacker.

Thursday, 24 February, 2011

Senior asks government to reinstate free tuition

Today's St. John's Telegram features a story about Herb Burton who is 82 years young and currently auditing a geography course at Memorial University of Newfoundland.

Burton is calling for the reinstatement of a zero tuition fee policy which previously applied to senior citizens attending classes at Memorial University. This policy was reversed during a period of budget cuts and tuition fee increases at the university in the mid-1990s. I remember this policy change taking place and, though the precise details escape me at present, I recall that the decision to charge tuition frees to seniors actually raised a relative pittance in revenue for the university while making the administration of then president Art May appear mean-spirited.

Today's Telegram article notes that research studies have found that learning in one's elder years appears to slow the onset of degenerative diseases like Alzheimer's. Indeed, research has shown that continuing education positively impacts the mental, physical, and emotional health of older adults, and that senior citizens who continue to participate in learning activities are more likely to be actively engaged in their families, communities, and personal relationships.

Such findings should serve as a great encouragement for our policy-makers to elevate the importance of continuing learning for older adults to the top portion of their public agendas. A good place would be to revisit and reverse the decision to begin charging tuition fees to senior citizens like Herb Burton.

Wednesday, 23 February, 2011

Privatization developments in British Columbia

Among the provinces, British Columbia may be considered a leader in the area of higher education privatization. The province is home to Royal Roads University, a public university with a mandate to be "self-funded". British Columbia is also home to Canada's first secular not-for-profit private university¸ Quest University, and one of the country's first for-profit degree-granting institutions, University Canada West.

Today's edition of Academica's Top 10 includes a couple of stories about recent developments in the area of privatization of British Columbia higher education. One story notes that Royal Roads University has entered into an agreement with Study Group to help recruit international students. Study Group will also deliver English language training and provide the first 2 years of an undergraduate program. Study Group, like its competitor Navitas, is a global leader in the area of higher education privatization.

Academica's Top 10 also notes that University Canada West has decided to phase out degree programs at its Victoria campus due to low enrollment at that location. There are further details in this Victoria Times Colonist story.

Monday, 21 February, 2011

Maritime students at MemorialU go the distance

Since January, I have made a number of posts about a study I am heading up which is examining the enrollment of students from the Maritime provinces at Memorial University in Newfoundland and Labrador.

In an earlier post on the subject, a comment from higher education consultant Alex Usher got us thinking about the distances that the Maritime students travel in order to study at Memorial University versus the distance they would travel if they stayed in their hometown and studied at the university nearest to them.*

Our calculations indicate that the average distance to Memorial University for the students in our sample is 1,511 km, while the average distance to the university nearest to their hometown is only 38 km.

Before they re-located to St. John's for university, almost one-quarter of the Maritime Migrant students (n = 65) lived in a settlement where a university is located. Almost half of them lived within 20 km of a university.

In the table below we provide a breakdown of the distances between hometown and nearest university for all of the Migrant students in our study.

Sunday, 20 February, 2011

Nova Scotia "Student Poverty Song" goes viral

More about the video here from the Halifax Chronicle-Herald.

Saturday, 19 February, 2011

Rio Tinto to invest $13M in Pathways to Education

From The Montreal Gazette:

Rio Tinto Alcan, the aluminum production arm of mining giant Rio Tinto Group, said Friday it will invest $13 million over the next five years in Pathways to Education Canada. The donation will lead to a significant expansion of the Pathways program, especially in Quebec, where most Alcan operations are located.

The objective is to help thousands of Quebec students to graduate successfully from high school and go on to post-secondary education.

Friday, 18 February, 2011

British Columbia budget maintains status quo

There was not much in the way of new post-secondary funding or initiatives in British Columbia's uneventful 2011 provincial budget, released on Tuesday. According to the Federation of Post-Secondary Educators of BC, the slight increase in funding included in the budget will bring per-student operating grants to public post-secondary institutions from $9,151 in 2010/11 to $9,317 in 2011/12.

Wednesday, 16 February, 2011

Postcards from Newfoundland and Labrador

My teaching load, research projects, and volunteering have frequently gotten the better of my regular blogging this semester. When I took a few minutes to look up from my latest writing project on the impact of marketization on access to post-secondary education in Canada, I noted that the student federation in Newfoundland and Labrador today delivered 15,000 or so postcards from their Fund the Future campaign to the Minister of Education.

I also received an email notification today that Alex Usher's new outfit, Higher Education Strategy Associates, has released a new report on higher education affordability in a sample of countries that account for the majority of global student enrollment and research activity. Here's how the report characterizes the current climate in Canada with respect to tuition fees:

There are five provinces where budgetary woes are likely to create significant upward pressure on tuition fees in the near future: Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island, New Brunswick, Ontario and Quebec. None of these provinces are especially well placed to gain from a rise in commodity and energy prices, and with the exception of Ontario, these provinces tend to be facing more significant demographic over the coming decades. Government finances in the four western provinces and Newfoundland, on the other hand, are likely to remain relatively healthy, as long as the federal government sticks by its promise not to cut transfer payments to provinces in its quest to balance its books. There will likely be less pressure to increase fees substantially in these provinces, though continued annual increases in the 3-5% range should not be ruled out. The exception here is Newfoundland, where rising offshore oil revenue and a substantial cross-party consensus for low tuition seems unlikely to change any time soon.

Tuesday, 15 February, 2011

Will higher education split?

Over on the Commonwealth of Learning blog, Sir John Daniel and Stamenka Uvalić-Trumbić have speculated on weather we will see "higher education split over the next decade or two into a public sector focused on research and a for-profit sector doing most of the teaching". They conclude as follow:

Some governments have long desired to see higher education divided into research universities and teaching institutions. Extrapolating the trends we have identified suggests that their wish may come true, with the added difference that most research will take place in publicly-supported institutions while most teaching will be done by for-profit enterprises.

Sunday, 13 February, 2011

About turn on Northern Ireland tuition fees

From the Belfast Telegraph:

Angry MLAs have again vowed to oppose increased university fees after a revised independent report overturned its initial conclusion that they should stay at current levels.

The original study just five months ago recommended no change, but an updated version yesterday would raise the current fee cap of £3,290 to a maximum of £5,750 — a hike of almost £2,500.

The delayed review by Institute of Directors chair Joanne Stuart said there is no support in Northern Ireland for the UK Government’s effective shift from public to mainly private funding of higher education.

But following the coalition Budget, she argued maintaining the status quo is no longer an option because that would leave the Department for Employment and Learning with an annual shortfall of between £40m to £65m.

Read more: http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/education/fury-over-aboutturn-on-tuition-fees-15077979.html#ixzz1DrMI8cNm

Friday, 11 February, 2011

Post-secondary attendance by parental income in Canada and the U.S.

A recent study carried out by Ontario researchers indicates that post-secondary attendance is more strongly related to parental income in the U.S. than in Canada.

The authors of the study estimated that the post-secondary attendance rate in the U.S. is 18% higher for individuals from the top family income quartile compared to those from the bottom quartile. In Canada, the difference in post-secondary participation between those in the highest and lowest income quartiles is just 8%.

The researchers further note that the U.S. provides more generous financial aid to low-income students than does Canada. Canada tends to provide relatively more aid to middle-income families than the U.S. Also, while individuals from higher income backgrounds in the U.S. may avail of unsubsidized government-sponsored loans, higher income Canadian youth are most often ineligible for such loans as Canada's government-sponsored student loans are need-based.

Download the full paper here and the four page summary here.

Thursday, 10 February, 2011

Nova Scotia to cap student debt, change loan-to-grant ratio

Yesterday's Halifax Chronicle-Herald included an op-ed piece on Nova Scotia's efforts to keep post-secondary education affordable by the province's Labour and Advanced Education Minister. An excerpt:

It is clear students want us to focus our efforts on capping the amount of student debt, improving the loan-to-grant ratio so students have to pay back less money, and providing financial assistance to those students who need it most. We agree with those priorities and have made some inroads.

Within the next few weeks, I will meet again with student leaders to discuss the establishment of a debt cap comparable to those in other jurisdictions, loan limits and a change to the loan-to-grant ratio, based on need.

The debt cap will reduce the need for graduates to leave the province because of high debt loads. The graduate-retention rebate provides eligible graduates with a maximum tax credit of $2,500 in the year of graduation and in each of the next five years to a maximum of $15,000 over the six-year period.

Hat tip to Academica's Top Ten

Wednesday, 9 February, 2011

Universities in England told to widen access

From BBC News:

Universities in England are being told that if they want to charge higher fees they must make greater efforts to attract students from poorer backgrounds.

Having raised the maximum fee level to £9,000 per year, the government wants to ensure that higher fees will not exclude poorer students from university.

Tuesday, 8 February, 2011

Parental income a key determinant of who goes to university in Atlantic Canada

The Higher Education Quality Council of Ontario (HEQCO) today released two new studies which examine factors that impact access to post-secondary education (see here and here). The HEQCO media release quotes co-author Dr. Ross Finnie as saying the results "present a fundamental challenge to our thinking about 'barriers' to post-secondary education (PSE)". I take that statement to be either intentionally or unintentionally hyperbolic.

In these reports, the authors suggest that 'sociocultural factors' such as whether young people or their parents actually have any money to pay for university or not are far, far less important than whether your Mom or Dad went to university themselves. Now, while researchers have known for some time that student choices about post-secondary education are strongly correlated with parental educational attainment, I would like to take this opportunity to point out that the whole "poor kids don't go to expensive universities because they don't 'value' education enough" argument is nothing short of foolishness. I hope this observation doesn't come as a disappointment to those readers who were hoping to use Dr. Finnie's findings as a meager excuse to continue to cut post-secondary funding and further raise student costs and debt levels.

Having said that, there is quite a bit of useful information contained in these new reports. For example, I was interested to read that the effects of parental income on access to university in the Atlantic provinces is much stronger than in other regions of Canada (see the figure below).

As one of the reports notes, while university participation rates are generally high across the Atlantic provinces, this level of participation is sustained by individuals with higher family incomes who are able to access university to a significantly greater extent.

Monday, 7 February, 2011

Students call for greater access to medical school

From the Canadian Federation of Medical Students:

he Canadian Federation of Medical Students (CFMS) will bring future physicians from across the country to Ottawa for its annual Federal Lobby Day on February 7, 2011.

Medical students from St John's to Vancouver will meet with Members of Parliament to discuss the underrepresentation of low income and rural background individuals in Canadian medical schools.

The lack of adequate socioeconomic and geographic diversity in medical schools threatens to exacerbate family doctor shortages and physician scarcity in underserviced communities. Students will propose potential solutions from policy makers to improve access to medical education among these groups.

Saturday, 5 February, 2011

Financial barriers affecting students with disabilities

A new report commissioned by the Higher Education Quality Council of Ontario (HEQCO) examines financial challenges faced by college and university students with disabilities in Ontario. The report draws its conclusions from survey data and interviews with post-secondary students with disabilities as well as data from Statistics Canada. Some of the key findings include the following:

Nearly half of all student participants in the study expected to graduate with a total debt of more than $20,000 and 81 per cent were concerned about the amount of debt they will incur by the time they graduate. Nearly 40 per cent of the students with disabilities were altering their post-secondary pursuits due to educational debt or financial barriers. Previous HEQCO research has shown that students with disabilities attend and graduate from post-secondary institutions at lower rates than non-disabled students.

While many of the challenges facing students with disabilities are applicable to all students, there are several unique obstacles. Students with disabilities take longer to complete their education, largely due to either their disability and/or government requirements regarding course limits. They also face an increasingly challenging work environment, as many struggle with the demands of heavy work and school schedules coupled with restrictions limiting the types of work and opportunities available.

Another obstacle for students with disabilities is the additional expense of assistive aids, medication and support services, including the cost of being assessed to receive full documentation of their disability, which alone can exceed $3,000. Much of these costs are being borne by the students, yet without these services and resources many students would be unable to complete their post-secondary education.

The full report, Assessment of Debt Load and Financial Barriers Affecting Students with Disabilities in Canadian Post-secondary Education, Ontario Report, is available online here.

Friday, 4 February, 2011

OECD video contest: What's your vision of progress?

As part of its 50th Anniversary celebrations, the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development is holding a video contest for young people between the ages of 18 and 25. Young people worldwide are invited to create a short video describing their vision of "progress". Three winners will be selected and invited to Paris in May, all-expenses-paid, for a special screening of the videos at the OECD Forum. Videos should be no longer than 3 minutes, made in English or French, and submitted by midnight (Paris, France time) on March 1, 2011.

Thursday, 3 February, 2011

New Brunswick students concerned about potential increase in tuition fees

From The Daily Gleaner:

The University of New Brunswick Student Union has added its voice of concern to that of St. Thomas University Students' Union over talk of tuition-fee scheduling.

Last week, the provincial government said it would work with universities on a four-year funding model that's to include a tuition-fee schedule.

Officials with the two student groups are worried that's going to translate into four years of scheduled tuition-fee hikes.

Shannon Carmont-McKinley, president of the UNB student union, said it's good the provincial government is working with post-secondary institutions to provide a predictable funding model that will allow universities to better plan and develop.

However, she said she hopes the provincial government doesn't use this as an excuse to shirk its responsibility when it comes to regulating tuition.