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Harvey P. Weingarten – Assessing critical skills for life and work: duelling anecdotes don’t measure up

With summer’s end, more than a half million students are back at it in Ontario’s public colleges and universities, typically investing two to five years and thousands of dollars in everything from tuition fees to technology. For its part, the Ontario government contributes more than $5.5 billion to the public postsecondary enterprise. Given the magnitude […]

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Martin Hicks – Still worth it, after all these years

Last week, the Globe and Mail dissected Ontario’s latest annual university graduate survey results.  Lead conclusion: “recent graduates of Ontario universities are doing worse on almost all measures of employment compared to those who graduated before the recession.”   And more pointedly: “humanities graduates have been particularly affected, with their real earnings dropping steeply from what […]

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Fiona Deller – Need to Read: Disruption, CBE and U2

Sharing the best in postsecondary news and commentary Back from vacation and I have a list of things to read that goes back a few weeks. So, here are just a few of the highlights: Clayton Christensen, of “disruptive innovation” fame, and Michelle Weise have written a new “mini-book” called Hire Education: Mastery, Modularization and […]

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Gail Smyth – Bring skilled trades and technologies to education discussion

Guest blogger: Gail Smyth Voices from HEQCO’s November 2014 conference Hands On: Exploring Apprenticeship and the Skilled Trades Today’s graduates are facing challenging times; they have been in school for most of their lives, have little to no work experience in their field of expertise and a large number of graduates may be facing years […]

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Stewart Kallio – Canadian apprenticeship completions lag far behind registrations

Guest blogger: Stewart Kallio Voices from HEQCO’s November 2014 conference Hands On: Exploring Apprenticeship and the Skilled Trades Work in the trades provides good, well-paying jobs, yet young Canadians do not see the skilled trades as a viable career. Often, they enter an apprenticeship path later in their work career. In Ontario, for example, the […]

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Barbara Endel – Accelerating Opportunity builds pathways to marketable credentials

Guest blogger: Barbara Endel Voices from HEQCO’s November 2014 conference Hands On: Exploring Apprenticeship and the Skilled Trades Right now, the United States is facing a major skills and educational attainment gap. Family-supporting jobs increasingly require a postsecondary credential.  It’s estimated that, by 2018, two-thirds of all jobs will require education beyond high school, but […]

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Joe Henry – Male students in higher education: we need a conversation

Guest blogger: Joe Henry There have been many conversations in the media and in education circles about the role that gender plays in student success and achievement. In the last 50 years we have seen significant and important shifts in female attendance and graduation from our postsecondary institutions across North America. As the father of […]

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Anthony Mann – Closing the gap between education and employment

Voices from HEQCO’s November 2014 conference Hands On: Exploring Apprenticeship and the Skilled Trades   Guest blogger: Anthony Mann If employer engagement in education were a snappier hashtag, it would be trending. Across the world, governments, institutions and organizations are asking themselves how can they close the gap between the worlds of education and employment, […]

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Fiona Deller – Need to Read: The future of higher ed (again), MOOCs and more

Sharing the best in postsecondary news and commentary A couple of weeks ago I posted a few pieces on the future of the lecture. Is it good, bad or a neutral teaching tool that can be used in a variety of ways? Lloyd Armstrong jumps into the debate with a good summary of the methodology […]