20 avril 2013
Ideal of justice motivates a British adult educator
By Aura Vuorenrinne. GENERATION NEXT. Adult education professional Alistair (Al) Lockhart-Smith promotes the need for balance in adult education policy. Alistair Lockhart-Smith, 33, works for the National Institute of Adult Continuing Education (NIACE) as a Project Officer. His duties include managing and coordinating national and international projects to support the development of adult education policy."In my work I get inspired by people I work with: they are genuinely passionate about adult education, and seeing the impact of adult education among practitioners, teachers and learners stimulates and inspires me.
The most annoying feature about my work is the amount of paper work involved. However this can be vital in ensuring that we know what works best to improve opportunities for adults to learn in ways that work best for them.
The mission of non-formal adult education is the concept of lifelong learning; laying the foundation for an inclusive learning society is important, especially for disadvantaged communities and hard to reach groups. Read more...
Erasmus for All is coming together
The negotiations over European Union´s new Programme for Education, Training, Youth and Sport are progressing. The final decision will be done earliest in May.
The trilogue negotiations between European Parliament, European Commission and EU Council have not been easy, but according to Mikko Nupponen, Assistant Director of the European Department of the Finnish National Agency for LLP CIMO (Centre for International Mobility) the negotiations have entered a more compromise-seeking phase.
Mr. Nupponen spoke in CIMO's Conference on Adult Education in Helsinki on 16 April 2013. He pointed out that no decisions have been made and everything can still change. Read more...
En 2011, un chômeur sur cinq a pu bénéficier d’une formation
Sur le blog de Michel Abhervé pour Alternatives économiques.A la lecture de l’étude publiée par la DARES, dans la collection Dares Analyses N°027 sous la signature de Johanne Aude “La formation professionnelle des demandeurs d’emploi en 2011″, nous pouvons à quel point l’annonce du président de la République lors de son déplacement de Blois est ambitieuse (voir Formation professionnelle: François Hollande s’est mis au défi).Celui-ci déclarait: “Prenons peut-être la réalité d’aujourd’hui. Seulement un chômeur sur quatre peut avoir une formation dans un délai de deux mois. Eh bien avec cette réforme, ce sera un chômeur sur deux; on va doubler les moyens pour qu’il puisse y avoir très rapidement, chaque fois qu’il y a une situation de chômage, une proposition de formation qui puisse être proposée. Rendez-vous compte qu’aujourd’hui, il y a un chômeur sur quatre qui peut passer quinze mois à Pôle emploi avant d’entrer en formation! Eh bien ce délai ne pourra plus dépasser six mois et six mois, c’est déjà beaucoup! “
Cette intervention présidentielle sous estime la réalité que montre le travail de la DARES qui écrit “Sur l’ensemble de l’année 2011, les demandeurs d’emploi ayant débuté une formation représentent 20,3% du nombre moyen de chômeurs sur l’année.” Et de plus “Cette proportion est en baisse de 0,7 point par rapport à 2010: le nombre de demandeurs d’emploi entrés en formation a baissé de 4,5% tandis que le nombre annuel moyen de chômeurs au sens du BIT n’a reculé que de 1%.”.
Ar an blag de Michael Abhervé do Roghanna Eacnamaíoch. Tar éis a léamh ar an staidéar a foilsíodh ag an dares a bhailiú dares Anailís Uimh 027 faoin síniú Johanne Aude "Gairmoiliúint do lucht cuardaigh fostaíochta i 2011," is féidir linn conas an uachtarán ar fhógra Is é an Phoblacht le linn a chuairte ar Blois uaillmhianach (féach Oiliúint: Hollande Tá dúshlán). Níos mó...Universities teach grads to go it alone
By Linda Nguyen. Students create their own job opportunities. Phil Jacobson thought getting a business degree would help open doors on Bay Street. He didn't expect it would also help him become a big wig on Main Street."I figured, out of all the undergrad possibilities that were out there, a business degree would position me as the most well-rounded coming out of school," said the 22-year-old president and co-founder of mobile app PumpUp.
"So I could either start something or get a great job and just have those good skills."
After graduating last summer from Wilfrid Laurier University in Waterloo, Ont., Jacobson decided that his dream wasn't to get poached by a big financial firm. Instead, he wanted to continue working for himself. And he's not alone. Although there are no statistics on how many university students become employers or self-employed after graduation, in recent years, Canadian universities have begun to update their curriculum to support an increasing number who want to work for themselves once they finish school. Traditionally, post-secondary institutions mainly focused on teaching students the skills needed to get hired by someone else. Read more...
Creating and managing your online presence
By Gavan Watson. Communicating about your academic self. As you move from being a graduate student to the next stage on your career path, employers will be searching for people like you. Telling your own academic story – and curating the breadth and depth of that information – will be an important way to catch their eye. One strategy to let employers know who you are and what you are about is to create an online academic profile.What you share in this academic profile is up to you. You need to decide whether to keep it strictly professional, with just your publication record and teaching philosophy statement, or whether to make it more personal. If the personal informs the professional, then sharing some personal content can enrich an employer’s understanding of who you are.
You may be concerned that there’s a risk of sharing too much (and hurting your chances of getting hired), but appropriate personal content certainly helps an employer measure your fit within the organization. Done well, the reward outweighs the risk. Read more...
UBC to host African students
By Jules Knox. About 270 students from Africa will have the opportunity to receive a Canadian education because of a new partnership among three of the country’s top universities and the MasterCard Foundation.Over the next 10 years, the foundation is providing the University of British Columbia, the University of Toronto and McGill University with $25-million each to educate African students in Canada. The program will pay for students’ tuition and living expenses, including pocket money, and set up internship opportunities for them back in Africa. Read more...
Canadian universities, copyright collective brace for battle over intellectual property
By Diana Mehta. There's a battle brewing in the world of Canadian academia. On one side stands Access Copyright, a collective which has provided institutions access to a pool of protected intellectual work for more than two decades while distributing royalties to the writers, artists and publishers it represents.On the other is a group of universities who no longer feel the need to pay for the services offered by the collective, opting instead to navigate the world of intellectual property rights without a middle agent. Simmering tensions are now threatening to boil over as Access Copyright takes one of Canada's largest universities to court — a move some see as a warning to others who've ended relations with the agency.
Access Copyright is claiming Toronto's York University, which opted out of an agreement with the collective, has improperly been reproducing and authorizing the copying of protected works. The issue goes beyond a single institution though. Read more...
Quarterly summary with a special call out to postdocs
By David Kent. It’s the one-year anniversary of the Black Hole moving over to University Affairs. Jonathan and I are very pleased with the added exposure and it’s been a real treat to work with Léo, Peggy and company over the last 12 months – Happy Anniversary! We hope that our readers have enjoyed the content and that they continue to follow along and contribute with excellent comments and guest posts. Another important message attached to this summary, though, is for postdoctoral fellows to help inform the policy that governs their status, salaries and future opportunities in Canada by filling out the CAPS postdoctoral survey. Last week, I wrote a UA news article on its importance and encourage you all to read through it and forward to your postdoctoral colleagues (including international postdocs in Canada and Canadian postdocs abroad!). Read more...It’s not about college or university, it’s about lifelong learning
By Bonnie M. Patterson. A looming skills shortage in Canada is grabbing its share of headlines and reigniting the debate about what’s better – a college or university education? Colleges are wonderful training grounds for our skilled workers. Their more recent work delivering highly applied college degrees with a skills focus makes a valuable contribution to increasing demands for credentials to meet the needs of today’s workplaces. But historically – and it still holds true today – the majority of jobs created in the market place require a university education. Ontario’s Ministry of Training Colleges and Universities’ own statistics show that 70 per cent of jobs in the coming years will require a university degree.And that’s why universities have responded with more than 500 agreements to help college students easily move into university degree programs. It’s also why universities believe in the important work of a new organization in Ontario, ONCAT, whose mission is to build even more bridges – bridges from apprenticeships to college diplomas, diplomas to diplomas, diploma to both college and university degrees, and finally university degrees to specialized college training – it’s all good stuff.
A recent analysis by the CIBC reinforces the value of a university education. The study shows jobs in the near future will be created to address labour shortages in health care, natural and applied sciences, management, as well as mining and engineering. The vast majority of these jobs require a university degree. Statistics Canada data shows that 700,000 jobs for university graduates were created between July 2008 and July 2012, compared to 320,000 for college-only graduates.
University graduates find jobs faster than those with only a college diploma – 87.5 per cent of university graduates are in jobs within six months of graduation. For college students, that figure is 83 per cent. And university graduates are better off in terms of lifetime premium earnings to the tune of more than $1.3-million. That’s good for the individual and good for government revenue, which benefits from taxes collected on those earnings Universities are not traditionally job training institutions, although they have always produced extraordinary graduates from such professional programs as law and medicine, business and architecture.
Even their non-professional programs produce graduates who get jobs. And in more recent years, universities are fostering innovation and producing entrepreneurs who create jobs for themselves and others. We often hear complaints that our universities are turning out too many history grads, and what good is a philosophy degree when it’s time to get a job. But the reality is that there are philosophy graduates running financial institutions, there are history graduates in politics and public policy, there are english graduates in management positions.
Some of those graduates didn’t go immediately into the job market; some went on to do graduate studies, some crossed over into college, perhaps to take some training in communications or media relations. The fact that people want to augment their learning to make themselves more marketable is a good thing. If universities have done their job well, they will have prepared our young people for lifelong learning, where they will pop back in and out of our colleges and universities or industry training programs as their own appetite for knowledge and the job market demands it.
This is why universities are offering a wide range of programs at their faculties of continuing education. And it’s why universities are working more closely than ever with colleges and postsecondary partners around the world. For some, getting a job isn’t only about learning a skill at college. It isn’t only about learning a core discipline at university. Getting and staying in the job market can be about both. Read more...
Let's upgrade undergrads to first-class citizens
By Alan Shepard. It’s a “tsunami”! Or a “Copernican revolution.” So say the president of Stanford and other university leaders. Not since the turn of the last millennium have so many people rung the doomsday alarm. This time it’s not the end of the world we’re worrying about, but the disintegration of undergraduate university education as we know it. To which I say – maybe. It’s clear we’re in a collective frenzy about the future of higher education, and the frenzy is likely to accelerate. Governments seek more accountability for the billions of tax dollars we all contribute. Students still seek transformative educations as well as job skills. Families seek access. Faculty seek meaningful engagement with students in an era that has opened up university education to the greatest percentage of any population in history. In our own ways we all seek “value for money,” that awful phrase that lays bare the economics of one of the most profoundly human of experiences – the joy of getting an education. Read more...
