I had the opportunity recently to participate in a conference panel for members of the Boards of Governors of Ontario universities. Our panel was charged to opine on the question of whether universities are meeting the needs of students and the public and, if there is room for improvement, what has to change. The conference […]
Category: Harvey P. Weingarten
Today, the Higher Education Quality Council of Ontario (HEQCO) released a major evaluation of the outcomes of the investment Canadian federal and provincial governments have made in graduate education. This report, Intentions For and Outcomes Following a Decade of Government Investment in Graduate Education, continues a series of papers we have published on graduate education. […]
I have been reading and hearing a lot about the “skills gap” in Canada, particularly the suggestion of significant shortages of people with the skill set to fulfill the jobs available in today’s labour markets. This discussion is often accompanied by commentary about the misalignment between what students learn in postsecondary programs and the requirements […]
After two years of work on a series of projects to investigate the feasibility and value of a learning outcomes perspective in higher education, we have learned some important lessons about this game-changing approach. First, the most promising aspect is the identification and measurement of general learning and cognitive skills such as critical thinking, problem […]
OECD’s recently released Education at a Glance 2012 is comparatively good news for Canada and even more so for Ontario. But in a twist on the old cliché, good news is the enemy of great news. Evident within the 500-plus pages of international educational performance measures are at least two lessons: the dangers of complacency […]
Statistics Canada has just released its annual Tuition and Living Accommodation Costs for Full-time Students at Canadian Degree-granting Institutions (TLAC) survey — essentially a snapshot of tuition fees and living costs for students attending Canada’s universities. As is the case with any snapshot, it provides a broad and useful general picture of the current state […]
I attended two conferences recently to speak on the issue of how governments form higher education policy and how postsecondary institutions can behave to have greater influence over the policies governments adopt and the decisions they make. Many of the speakers in these gatherings approach these problems from some theoretical orientation. In contrast, my contributions […]
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Harvey P. Weingarten – Tooting Our Own Horn
HEQCO is an organization built on the principles of inquiry, performance assessment, evidence and research. So, it seemed only appropriate that we subject our own performance to a critical review and rigorous evaluation by an informed outsider. To that end, we commissioned an outside expert to review HEQCO. The reviewer selected was Lorne Whitehead, an […]
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, […]