By . I have a strong message today. It’s mostly for people in social science fields (especially Deans and Department heads), but I think Provosts, VPs Research and President will want to pay attention. The message is this: the academic profession in Canada desperately needs to take its head out of its collective behind when it comes to public service. More...
13 janvier 2018
Public Service
Field of Study (oh the humanities!)
By . So let’s look at the division of undergraduate enrolment for a second. Figure 1 shows the split between fields of science. The Big Six are Social Science & Law (20%), Business/Commerce/Administration (19%), Science – here meaning a combination of physical sciences, life sciences, math/computer sciences and agriculture (16%), Humanities (13%), Health (11%) and Engineering (10%). Together these six fields make up almost 90% of total enrolment. More...
Student Numbers
By . In December, Statistics Canada released its 2015/2016 enrolment data from the Post-Secondary Student Information System. I didn’t quite have time to get to it before the break, but on New Year’s Day I decided to take a little stroll through the data. More...
The New Third Pillar
By . There is a revolution going on in Ontario’s higher education system, but remarkably, very few people have noticed it yet. Henceforth, Ontario will have not just a college system and a university system, but also a third category of institutions which does not have a name but which, for the moment are called Indigenous Institutes but which may well soon be called Indigenous Universities. More...
What’s in a name?
By . Every once in awhile I get asked: how come Canadians call the “universities” but Americans call them “colleges” and I had to confess that I really didn’t know beyond “it has something to do with the original American institutions being modelled on English universities and the Canadian ones on Scottish ones”. But over Xmas, I did some reading and found the actual answer. I think. More...
New research suggests levels of independent study are more important than contact hours in determining how much students learn
The Student Academic Experience Survey is a rich source of data on what matters to student learning in higher education. This Policy Note reports a statistical analysis of the inter-relationships between the many variables in the survey and how much of an independent effect these variables have on whether students report having learnt “a lot” during their studies. More...
New study shows the benefits of international students are ten times greater than the costs – and are worth £310 per UK resident
The Higher Education Policy Institute and Kaplan International Pathways are jointly publishing a major new piece of research, The costs and benefits of international students by parliamentary constituency, undertaken by London Economics. More...
Top Hat Marketplace: What is it and should we care?
When Top Hat announced their latest round of financing a year ago ($22.5m), I admit to having been skeptical, or more accurately cynical, about their stated purpose. The company was primarily known for its mobile and laptop-based classroom response system, but now it is claiming to be a digital content company. More...
Wow: This app measures campus cellular download speeds
Researchers at Rochester Institute of Technology developed a new smartphone app that allows users to measure the actual download speeds of cellular providers and compare results in the specific geographic area. It also has security capabilities that can protect users’ identities. More...
