HEQCO CEO David Trick has mused in recent weeks (see here and here) about how Ontario’s postsecondary education sector can look to lessons from the past to help us deal with today’s exceptional circumstances. This idea of finding precedents for the unprecedented is one that we will return to, but this week I’d like to take a moment […]
Tag: System Design
System Design
Last week I looked at whether Ontario’s experience with the double cohort in 2003 could offer some lessons for the coming years. If large numbers of students decide to take a gap year this September and enrol in September 2021, the planning processes adopted in 2003 might bring some order to an enrolment surge. Sadly, Ontario […]
Current circumstances have caused us at HEQCO to think about whether anything in the history of Ontario higher education might be remotely relevant today. Historical analogies can give comfort that, having solved problems in the past, we can solve comparable problems now. Ken Steele has made an interesting analogy: If many students take the coming academic […]
We’ve been seeing the word “micro” a lot lately — microcourses, microdegrees, micromodules. It’s an interesting contrast to the introduction of massive open online courses, or MOOCs, from the beginning of the last decade. But much like the MOOC discourse, it feels as though there’s almost as much uncertainty as there is hype over microcredentials. […]
Report calls on Ontario PSE institutions to introduce programs for displaced workers, adult learners As Ontario’s economy continues to undergo rapid change, the province’s colleges and universities will need to introduce new short-term, flexible training programs that cater to the needs of displaced workers and other adult learners, recommends a new report by the Higher […]
Time to introduce new postsecondary performance metrics, report argues Ontario’s postsecondary education system would be best served by a set of performance metrics that would measure, among other things, the skills students acquire during their studies, the link between programs and job success, and institutional financial performance, argues a new paper by the Higher Education […]
Rise of competency-based education could help bridge ‘skills gap’ With increased pressure on the postsecondary education system to prepare students for a changing workforce, competency-based education (CBE) is emerging as a promising model for preparing graduates to meet employer demands. A new report published by the Higher Education Quality Council of Ontario, Competency-based Education: Driving the […]
Visit our sustainability page to read more of HEQCO’s research on this topic. Sustaining the quality of higher education goes beyond simply balancing the books As Ontario universities and colleges struggle to deal with rising expenses and stagnant revenues, academic quality risks being compromised, argues a new report by the Higher Education Quality Council of […]
Why did those who created this agency include the word quality in its name, even though it resulted in one of the clumsiest acronyms — HEQCO — on the face of the earth? I think it’s because they were smart and prescient. They understood that there are a million questions one could ask and research […]