The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) has released the 2011 edition of its annual publication Education at a Glance. The full text of the report can be accessed online here. As in previous years, the Canadian Education Statistics Council has also released a companion report, Education Indicators in Canada: An International Perspective 2011.
The educational attainment data in the OECD report are similar to those reported last year. Canada leads the OECD in terms of educational attainment amongst working age adults, with 49% of the Canadian population aged 25-64 having attained a college or university (i.e., tertiary) education. On average across OECD countries, 30% of adults have a tertiary qualification.
Wednesday, 14 September, 2011
Education at a Glance 2011
Tuesday, 13 September, 2011
Growing administration costs and tuition fees
From the 2011 College Guide and Rankings edition of the Washington Monthly:
No statistic about higher education commands more attention—and anxiety—among members of the public than the rising price of admission. Since 1980, inflation- adjusted tuition at public universities has tripled; at private universities it has more than doubled. Compared to all other goods and services in the American economy, including medical care, only “cigarettes and other tobacco products” have seen prices rise faster than the cost of going to college. And for all that, parents who sign away ever-larger tuition checks can be forgiven for doubting whether universities are spending those additional funds in ways that make their kids’ educations better—to say nothing of three times better.
Between 1975 and 2005, total spending by American higher educational institutions, stated in constant dollars, tripled, to more than $325 billion per year. Over the same period, the faculty-to-student ratio has remained fairly constant, at approximately fifteen or sixteen students per instructor. One thing that has changed, dramatically, is the administrator-per-student ratio. In 1975, colleges employed one administrator for every eighty-four students and one professional staffer—admissions officers, information technology specialists, and the like—for every fifty students. By 2005, the administrator-to-student ratio had dropped to one administrator for every sixty-eight students while the ratio of professional staffers had dropped to one for every twenty-one students.
Apparently, as colleges and universities have had more money to spend, they have not chosen to spend it on expanding their instructional resources—that is, on paying faculty. They have chosen, instead, to enhance their administrative and staff resources. A comprehensive study published by the Delta Cost Project in 2010 reported that between 1998 and 2008, America’s private colleges increased spending on instruction by 22 percent while increasing spending on administration and staff support by 36 percent. Parents who wonder why college tuition is so high and why it increases so much each year may be less than pleased to learn that their sons and daughters will have an opportunity to interact with more administrators and staffers— but not more professors. Well, you can’t have everything.
Monday, 12 September, 2011
Women's status in higher education: Equity matters
The posting below, which came to me recently via the Tomorrows-Professor mailing list, is the opening of the executive summary of the Association for the Study of Higher Education (ASHE) report Women's Status in Higher Education: Equity Matters by Elizabeth J. Allan. The report is available from the Wiley Online Library here.
Significant gains have been made in women's access to and representation in higher education. Although they are important, focus on these improvements provides only a partial picture of gender equity and inequity. Taken alone, enrollment data tend to eclipse other factors that shape women's experiences in higher education. For instance, aggregate enrollment data do not portray the persistent lack of gender parity among students studying engineering, computer science, and other science and technology fields, nor do they depict the quality of classroom and campus experiences. Women studying and working in postsecondary institutions continue to bump against glass ceilings and sticky floors, they experience pay disparities and the threat and reality of sexual harassment, and violence continues to interfere with workplace and living environments on campus.
Why Should We Care?
Lack of equity in higher education can have far-reaching and negative consequences for learning environments, quality of life, and career satisfaction of both women and men studying and working in academic institutions. This monograph foregrounds gains made and shared challenges women face while also acknowledging how race, social class, and other aspects of identity intersect with sex and gender and contribute to shaping one's professional status in profound ways. Literature related to women's access and representation in higher education, experiences of campus climate, and predominant strategies employed to enhance gender equity in U.S. higher education are reviewed.
Friday, 9 September, 2011
Pathways to completion for low-income students
New paper from the Community College Research Center:
This paper uses administrative data from Washington State to chart the educational pathways of first-time community college students over seven years, with a focus on young, socioeconomically disadvantaged students. Of particular interest are the rates at which students enter a program of study or concentration (by passing multiple college-level courses within a focused field of study), the amount of remediation taken by students in each concentration, and the rates at which students in different concentrations earn certificates or associate degrees, or transfer to four-year institutions. The paper identifies patterns of progression among students with low socioeconomic status and makes recommendations for practitioners and policymakers.Full paper is available here in .pdf format.
Thursday, 8 September, 2011
Canadian Apprenticeship Forum 2012 Conference
The Canadian Apprenticeship Forum will hold its 2012 biennial conference in Regina, Saskatchewan next June.
The conference theme is Apprenticeship: Strategies for Success - Diversity • Innovation • Engagement. CAF has announced that the deadline for speaker submissions has been extended to September 16, 2011.
Wednesday, 7 September, 2011
DalhousieU dumps anti-plagiarism software
From The Toronto Star:
A decision by Dalhousie University not to renew its contract for anti-plagiarism software has some professors wondering how they’re going to nab cheaters.
The school has discontinued its relationship with turnitin.com after “we lost trust in the partnership,” said Dwight Fischer, the institution’s chief information officer.
Specifically, the school learned in July that student papers were being stored on U.S. servers instead of Canadian servers as had been contracted.
Tuesday, 6 September, 2011
Hundreds thrown out of N.L. training programs
From CBC Newfoundland and Labrador:
More than 300 skilled-trade students have been pulled out of classrooms across the province because the government program paying their way has dried up.
Brian Carey is one of them. He was supposed to be in school training for a new career.
Instead, he's at home watching his three boys and pondering his future.
“I was already in class for three days and we went through the course and I was enjoying the course and then got a phone call and I was told there wasn't enough funding, there were too many applicants and I couldn't go back to class,” he said.
Monday, 5 September, 2011
Ecuador’s free higher education: Who will benefit?
Pennsylvania State University professor David Post writes about Ecuador’s policy of free higher education in the Fall 2011 issue of International Higher Education quarterly:
Universities are expensive for families in Latin America and in much of the world, not because of the fees they charge. This was especially not a barrier for public universities in Ecuador prior to 2009, because universities used a sliding scale based on income. Instead of direct fees, the biggest expense comes from the years of sacrifice by families when they encourage their children to study and eventually to pass competitive entrance exams, as opposed to working to support the household economy. In recent years, although about 80 percent of each birth cohort entered secondary schools, there was a large dropout rate among the poor. Only about half of each cohort finishes secondary schooling and is thus eligible for “free” university attendance.
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