I graduated from McGill University in 1974 with a B.Sc. in Honours Psychology. In a flight of fancy, I decided to see whether that program still exists and, if so, how the current program compares to the one I graduated from 43 years ago. These are the trips down memory lane one is increasingly inclined […]
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Martin Hicks — Data Done Right!
In an excellent new paper, David Trick and Jinli Yang analyze Ontario’s existing surveys of college and university graduates, and look ahead to imagine the next generation of performance metrics for our public institutions. The surveys have been running for almost 20 years. Trick and Yang note that the data is of broad interest to […]
We recently asked Ontario universities for some data that would allow us to calculate how much salaries paid to continuing full-time faculty have been increasing in recent years. We did not ask for individual records, of course, — we understand personal privacy — but only aggregations at the institutional and provincial level. The universities said […]
In 1967, then Minister of Education Bill Davis launched a network of Colleges of Applied Arts and Technology. It was kind of a radical idea. He envisioned a set of comprehensive institutions that would offer a wide variety of programs focused on skill development through hands-on training. The colleges would provide flexible learning options — […]
I have experienced three phases in the evolution of the learning outcomes concept. Learning outcomes refers to what students should know and be able to do as a result of the education they get in their postsecondary programs. The first phase of the learning outcomes concept was already underway when I started at HEQCO in […]
Welcome to the latest episode of It’sNotAcademic: the podcast – education conversations from HEQCO. Last month, HEQCO invited experts from across Canada and the world to take part in a two-day workshop examining a big question: “How do you assess qualiy in higher education?” One of the participants was Hamish Coates, professor of higher education […]
By 2025: Every Ontario student has an equitable opportunity to attend and succeed in postsecondary education. HEQCO’s long-term goal for access to higher education was front and centre at our 2017 conference, Rethinking Access: When non-traditional is the new normal. It was also the focus of a conference first for us: a hands-on, interactive workshop, […]
There has been much discussion in the postsecondary education community about the importance of experiential learning as an innovative pedagogy and key path to smoothing the transition to the job market for graduates. Research indicates that when students can connect their experiences in the classroom to outside the classroom, engagement increases and the transition to […]
With Thursday’s unveiling of the 2017 provincial budget, we’re reminded that last year’s budget included an announcement (with great fanfare) of reforms to the Ontario Student Assistance Program, or OSAP. Those reforms were designed to encourage and support more low-income youth to attend postsecondary education, and, as HEQCO has said before, that’s a really great […]