HEQCO’s communications team seized the occasion of the recent Ontario college and university information fairs to shoulder up to prospective postsecondary students, since our home on the 24th floor of the Toronto Star Building doesn’t lend itself to day-to-day contact with students. (That will change, however, when Collège Boréal moves its Toronto operations to 1 […]
In the month or so since our conference, Fear of Finance: Financial Literacy and Planning for Postsecondary Education, we here at HEQCO have been doing a lot of thinking about what we learned, what we heard, and how it might affect our future work in this area. For those of you who were there, a […]
As some of you may already know, Ken Norrie, HEQCO’s first vice president, research, concludes his time with us in mid-December. HEQCO is all about evidence-based research, and the following staff-written tribute to Ken is clear evidence of his unwavering commitment to research, to higher education and to his many colleagues. I join them in […]
The following remarks were delivered by HEQCO President and CEO Harvey Weingarten on October 18 at the C.D. Howe Institute. Talk to the C.D. Howe Institute Harvey P. Weingarten President, Higher Education Quality Council of Ontario Toronto, Ontario October 18 2011 Check against delivery Canada has a good, likely very good, public postsecondary system. But, […]
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What is an innovative university?
I participated in a panel on “Innovative Universities” as part of a workshop on innovation held in September at the Perimeter Institute. Two questions posed to panel members were: (i) “What does an innovative university look like?” and (ii) “Does Canada have innovative universities?” I suggested that if one wants to know whether a university […]
A new HEQCO conference, Fear of Finance: Financial Literacy and Planning for Postsecondary Education (Nov. 3-4) will explore educational financial literacy — the knowledge of the costs, benefits and available aid associated with higher education. And it’s not a moment too soon. Ontario leads the nation in postsecondary participation, but despite rising enrolments overall, the […]
One of the most startling statistics I learned since joining HEQCO last year was that about 50 per cent of students eligible for financial aid don’t apply for it, even though some of the money they would get is grants that they do not have to repay. Who gives up the opportunity of free government […]
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Carolyn Acker: Closing the Achievement Gap
In 2001, as executive director of the Regent Park Community Health Centre, I founded the Pathways to Education program with Norman Rowen. At the time we didn’t think of ourselves as social entrepreneurs. We were working hard to break the cycle of poverty and implement the health centre’s vision of “community succession”– that the young […]
HEQCO has produced or commissioned more than 126 research studies on postsecondary access, quality and accountability. While we regularly share our research with hundreds of people involved in the sector, including government, academic leaders and media, we can’t really expect the beleaguered press to tell our story to the broader public as often as we’d […]