23 juin 2013
China’s growing glut of unemployed graduates
By Patti Waldmeir. My maid and her husband, a driver, have scrimped and saved and crammed themselves into a tiny flat in Shanghai for decades with one goal in mind: to give their only son a crack at the “Chinese dream.”Now those decades of deprivation have reached their climax as the cherished child of these hard-working people graduates from university and takes his first job: as a construction worker. And he counts himself lucky to have a job. Read more...
Who teaches university students? Contract teachers
By Craig Mcfarlane. Behind the rhetoric about the brave new world of university education is a dystopia: students who live in their parents’ basements watching pre-recorded and perennially rebroadcast lectures on iPads, who never set foot on campus, and whose “work” (really, pressing the right button on a multiple-choice test) is marked by algorithms. When talking about the world of online learning, university administrators are fond of noting dramatic cost savings, not least because as a recent opinion piece had it, “less well-paid individuals” can teach some of the courses. Read more...1970s: 1 professor, 12 students - 2013: 1 professor, 22 students
By Julia Christensen Hughes. Over the last year, much has been written about the future of the university, particularly concerning jobs, tuition rates and funding. Even as enrolment numbers continue to climb and post-graduation employment rates are still strong, universities have been criticized for their lack of direct focus on job preparation and the cost of a university education. At the same time, mounting budgetary constraints have resulted in the need for universities (like so many other sectors of society) to do more with less while meeting increasing accountability expectations. Read more...To close the gender gap, make other jobs sexy
By David Kent. When I was in the early stages of my undergraduate degree, I thought long and hard about doing an MBA in combination with science. It seemed to me that the sector was underdeveloped in Canada and good science training was going to be essential to a successful career. I was motivated to go out and create products that were useful for people and make money while doing so. That was circa 2001 and, upon reflection, I believe that my science mentors from 3rd year undergraduate onwards steered me away from the biotech industry repeatedly and uncompromisingly – demonizing such careers as “selling out” or “not real science.” To be fair, I am quite happy with where I ended up and the scientific mentoring I have received along the way has been incredible, but some part of me wonders how much of a demographic shift in science training could be achieved if the impressions left on young minds were different. Read more...MOOCs, Access, and Privileged Assumptions
By Melonie Fullick. Later this week I’m going to be on a panel about the inescapable subject of MOOCs, so for this post I’m thinking through an issue I’ve been noticing since I last wrote a big post on this topic, which was during the peak of the media mayhem in July 2012. For many of those researching higher education, even those who’ve been doing it for just a few years as I have, the ongoing hyperbolic MOOC debate that has hijacked the higher ed news has been quite frustrating. Of course, there is plenty of bluster on both sides of this debate. But it’s really troubling to see many perfectly legitimate criticisms reduced to straw-person arguments about “faculty fear“ (“those teachers just don’t want to lose their jobs!”), or about how those who are skeptical must be “against accessibility”. Read more...Helping anxious students
By Nicola Koper. I’ve had a few reminders lately that university students represent a particular subset of the population. Like most of their professors, a lot of our students are type-A, hard-working, driven and perhaps tend towards overachievement. Traits that most of us can sympathize with. While these personality traits may well have brought them to their current level of success, they can also lead to levels of anxiety and stress that less passionate students never have to face. The vast majority of professors care not just about the academic performance of students, but also about their personal well-being, and indeed the two can influence each other. Read more...Labour markets in Canada - Which graduates are really in short supply?
By Ted Hewitt. A spate of analyses and commentaries have appeared recently, proclaiming the deleterious effects of actual and looming skills shortages on the Canadian economy. Yet in reality, the situation – and its solutions – is far more complex than such simple statistics would imply and a closer look at Canada’s “skilled labour shortage” reveals more than a few surprises. Labour shortages, in fact, do not just occur in the sciences, as is commonly presumed. They are just as prevalent – if not more so – in many social sciences and humanities fields. First, consider how the term “skills shortage”, meaning essentially fewer people available to fill critical shortages, is typically characterized. A report prepared by the CIBC World Markets indicates, for example, that in 2012, no less than 30 percent of Canadian businesses indicated that they faced a skilled labour shortage, double the number posted in 2010. Another survey of 100 senior executives published late last year by Workopolis similarly indicated that 32 percent believed that the shortage of skilled workers was the number one problem facing Canadian business in general. Read more...Could the MOOC save education?
By Rick Gray. Two weeks ago, in this space, I offered a few observations about the rise of the massive, open, online course (MOOC) and my initial experience with a course on the subject of Global Climate Change. At some future date, if the crick don’t rise, I will expand upon what I’ve learned about Anthropocentric Global Warming (AGW). For now, let’s focus on the possibilities of a world in which MOOCs are becoming a real educational option. My long-time readers will know that my critique of modern education begins with the proposition that we, as a society, have no idea what we want our schools to accomplish. We get little guidance from professional educators – especially the well-paid, high-ranking administrators of our universities and public school systems – who are, for the most part, mere politicians. For surely, their agendas are political – defending and, when possible, seeking to expand their bureaucratic empires. Read more...University Provosts Express Skepticism over MOOCs
The Committee on Institutional Cooperation recently released a position paper on MOOCs and higher education written by fifteen university provosts. The paper expresses the provosts' skepticism of MOOCs, calling into question the need to partner with external providers, saying “while new and cost effective technological capabilities make certain changes in higher education possible, it does not necessarily follow that such changes are desirable, or would be endorsed or utilized by our existing students, faculty, or community members. Nor does it mean that we fully grasp the costs and business models that might surround new strategies for broadly disseminating course content.” The provosts further questioned the general effectiveness of MOOCs explaining that the ability for MOOCs to technically reaching hundreds of thousands of participants “is not, in and of itself, a means for extending educational opportunity to millions of potential ‘students.’ ” Read more...
Probing Question: Are MOOCs here to stay?
By Melissa Beattie-Moss. In higher education, 2013 may be remembered as the year of the MOOC. For those playing catch-up, MOOCs, or Massive Open Online Courses, are college-level classes taught entirely over the Internet. Like students in brick-and-mortar classrooms, students enrolled in MOOCs take notes and tests and participate in discussions. Unlike traditional courses -- or even typical online courses -- MOOCs are usually free, draw hundreds or even thousands of students, and are run with minimal direct contact with teachers, with an emphasis instead on brief and (presumably) engaging video presentations. Colleges and universities are scrambling to get onboard the MOOC train -- hundreds now offer some form of Web-based curriculum -- while at the same time debating what the trend means for the future of higher education. Read more...
