Léo Charbonneau, Guest blogger According to its most recent annual report (PDF, pg. 26), the Higher Education Quality Council of Ontario received roughly $5.5 million in operating funds from the provincial government for the 2012-13 fiscal year. The amount of quality research the council is able to conduct with that relatively modest sum is impressive. More than […]
Celia Popovic, Guest blogger The launch this month of a new teaching and learning site on York University’s website has prompted a flurry of emails from colleagues within and beyond the university commenting on the prominence we have given to teaching. As we all know, websites are prime real estate in the virtual world and […]
HEQCO released a report this week providing an extensive review of outcomes-based funding models used in postsecondary education and their effectiveness. Outcomes-based funding is a practice where institutions receive their funding, partially or totally, on the basis of performance, specifically, the achievement of agreed-upon goals or outcomes (I use the terms “outcomes-based funding” and “performance-based […]
David Trick, Guest blogger Having occasionally chided my friends at universities and colleges for not knowing enough about each other’s systems, I should confess to one of my own blind spots: I have not paid enough attention to apprenticeship. For historical and institutional reasons, apprenticeship in Ontario is often seen as being outside the realm […]
Guest blogger: Carolyn Crosby About five years ago I had a student in grade 10 who told me his brother was in a college carpentry program and the first thing his college teacher said was: “Forget all the math they taught you in high school – it doesn’t apply here.” I couldn’t refute his statement […]
A recent Globe and Mail article pointed out that Canadian universities appear to be slipping in world rankings. This is not a good thing. Higher education institutions — because of the students they teach, the research and discoveries they make, and the communities they support — are some of the most critical public institutions in […]
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Martin Hicks – Wrenches and scalpels
I was thinking about this fall’s HEQCO conference “Hands on: Exploring apprenticeship and the skilled trades.” We are broadening our focus to embrace pieces of the postsecondary mosaic beyond public colleges and universities, and the conference is but one manifestation. And yet, even as we do so we are aware of a trade off (pun […]
We can puff out our chests with pride. The most current OECD numbers show that Canada still tops the charts for postsecondary attainment — number one in college attainment, number one in overall attainment for 25 to 64 year olds. And Ontario’s at the top of the heap in both college and university attainment for […]
In a recent blog we wrote that Ontario undergraduate tuition was around $4,000. At about the same time, the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives said Ontario undergraduate tuition is $8,474. It’s a Star Trek episode with parallel universes. How does that happen? The Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives didn’t make its numbers up. Statistics Canada […]