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Access Reboot: New Directions for Higher Education

We are very pleased to announce the return of the HEQCO conference. This one-day, in-person event will be taking place on November 3, 2023 at the Delta Hotel Toronto. HEQCO’s 9th conference, Access Reboot: New Directions for Higher Education will be an opportunity to share best practices, develop ideas and challenge traditional approaches to equity, […]

Women in Academia

Welcome to the Women in Academia Project HEQCO is pleased to announce the release of a multi-part research project designed to explore current and historical gender disparities among faculty in Ontario universities. Despite advocacy efforts, collective bargaining, targeted funding and legislation, gaps in representation, promotion and earnings for women academics persist. These inequalities are especially […]

Quick Stats

How many Ontario students applied to the province’s colleges and universities during the last decade? How many enrolled? How many graduated? Find the answers to these and other good questions in Quick Stats, a compendium of data on Ontario’s postsecondary system. Note: All visualizations begin in 2013 and go up to the most recent year […]

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Lena Balata and Ken Chatoor — Fostering a Culture of Care: Proactive and Inclusive Mental Health in Postsecondary Institutions

The COVID-19 pandemic has had the dual effect of negatively impacting student mental health while also disrupting the delivery of mental health supports. These dueling challenges come at a time when postsecondary institutions are working to shift their approach to mental health support from reactive to proactive. A proactive model is one built to engage, […]

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Victoria Barclay and Ken Chatoor — BIPOC student support professionals doing anti-racist work need support too

Substantial evidence shows that racism in Canada has worsened in recent years. In addition to alarming rises in hate crimes in cities such as Toronto, Ottawa, Vancouver and Montreal, there has also been a particular rise in anti-Asian hate that is disproportionately affecting younger Asian Canadians. Recent events such as the discoveries of mass graves […]

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Jackie Pichette, Dua Abdelqader and Mona Eghanian — Unlike cars, microcredentials won’t drive themselves

Microcredentials are a form of focused learning with the potential to respond to both the modern hiring needs of employers and the training needs of adults looking to advance or pivot in the labour market. At HEQCO, we define them as being tied to short learning opportunities that are focused on a discrete set of […]

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Jennifer Han – Shifting the Access Framework of Higher Education: Benefits of a Strength-based Lens

Our perceptions are shaped by the way information is presented to us. This applies everywhere, including postsecondary education (PSE) where the dominant perspective often positions certain groups of students through a deficit framework. Deficit thinking uses a blame-the-victim way of attributing student failures to individual, family or community traits and approaches student difficulty through a […]

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Natalie Pilla: How Increased Access to WIL Can Support Ontario’s Post-pandemic Recovery

Work-integrated learning (WIL) — including co-ops, internships and practicums — is widespread in Canada; nearly half of postsecondary students complete WIL as part of their studies. Participation in WIL is associated with higher employment earnings and a higher likelihood of finding full-time work after graduation. Unfortunately, 35% of Canadian postsecondary students have missed out on […]

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Janice Deakin and Julia Colyar — Introducing the new HEQCO Research Roadmap

Our appointments as CEO and Vice President just over a year ago turned out to be coincident with many things, some anticipated and others not! The need to develop a new strategic research framework to guide HEQCO’s activities for the next three years was top of mind for us; however the path to completion was […]