By Garry Marr. It’s not the job you wanted but maybe it’s the job you should take.
Youth unemployment is double the national average, forcing many graduates to accept the first job that comes along even if it is not in their chosen field and a long way from their chosen path.
Students have faced high tuition costs, even relative to inflation, and their debt is at record amounts compared with past generations. And those loan payments have to begin six months after graduation at a whopping 2.5 percentage points above prime lending rate.
Byrne Luft, vice-president of operations at human resources company Manpower, says it’s become a bit of a dirty word for university graduates but maybe it’s time to consider a trade to fall back on. Read more...

When it comes to paying for the education they need to get on with their lives, Ontario’s college and university students are maxed out. Since 2006, tuition fees have risen by five per cent a year, forcing distraught students to dig themselves ever deeper into a debt hole and prompting them to cry out with increasing volume that enough is enough. To his credit, Ontario’s new Minister of Training, Colleges and Universities, Brad Duguid, is listening. And although he’s unlikely to freeze tuition, as many student leaders unreasonably demand, he appears poised to hold future increases below five per cent — possibly to one per cent on top of the rate of inflation.
That step would be an appropriate one, yet it will have to be followed by more movement by the Liberal government. While the average university undergraduate paid $4,933 a year in 2005-06, by the start of the current school year, that payout had risen to $7,180 — an increase that dwarfs any rise in inflation. Ontario’s tuition is now by far the most expensive in Canada. Read more...

By Garry Marr. Getting an education is all well and good, but students have to be realistic about the debt they take on to do so.
Just because the youth unemployment rate is double that of the general population doesn't mean education is a waste of money, but it's easy to understand why students might think so. The Canadian Federation of Students says the average graduate hits the workforce with a debt load of $27,000. It doesn't help that tuition is rising faster than inflation, climbing another 5% this academic year, according to Statistics Canada, while inflation has been well below the Bank of Canada's 2% target. Read more...

By Nobina Robinson. Twenty years after the “brain drain” of the 1990s, a new threat to the supply of talent in Canada is apparent. Key industry sectors and leading employers in Canada are warning of a skills shortage and a lack of skilled tradespeople. Others call this a skills “mismatch.” Governments are under pressure to enact a range of labour market “interventions,” from short-term fixes to immigration to new investment in training and skills upgrading to changes to existing talent support programs. Canada’s failure to graduate enough tradespeople has been a constant for decades. While Canada had nearly 400,000 registered apprentices in 2010, less than 50 per cent went on to obtain their certifications. Most dropouts leave because current policies make it impossible for them to stay. Read more...

By Jennifer Lewington. Just one of four PhD graduates becomes a professor, which begs the question of how to capitalize on the talents of those not headed for academia. One answer, many believe, is internships at the master’s, doctoral and postdoctoral level. Such programs give young scholars an early taste of working in industry and help Canadian companies boost research and development activities.
“We have a huge number of reports that talk about innovation being critical and for the need for creative thinkers with the capacity to move ideas to market,” says Janet Walden, vice-president of research partnerships for the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council (NSERC), which offers an industry internship program. “A huge amount of talent comes out of our universities and with that talent comes a lot of ideas and knowledge and you want to put that to work for Canada.”
However, matching companies and researchers is a challenge. Canada lags the United States in the proportion of PhDs in industry, research shows, and newly-minted PhDs, with theoretical expertise, typically lack job-ready experience. Read more...

By Karen Seidman. That was the reaction from some university officials to the recent public charge that English universities in Quebec are getting more than their fair share of funding.
The allegation, made by a group of nationalist academics in an open letter in Le Devoir, left some university officials wondering why this issue keeps arising.
After all, this is an age where a francophone student can study at an English university and write all papers and exams in French, where HEC Montréal offers courses in English and where McGill University’s new principal-designate is a francophone for the first time. Read more...

By David Kent. There has been a lot of rumbling over the last few years about how poorly compensated postdoctoral fellows are and how the system churns out too many doctoral students. Many have suggested that the best solution is to trim the number of positions and increase the salaries of those remaining. However, I suspect that many of the people arguing for better pay and fewer postdoc positions do not consider that they might be part of the cohort who would lose their jobs if such a measure were undertaken. I imagine that just about everyone would like to have more money and more job security, so I always find the “pay me more” arguments tough to swallow unless they are backed up with some good reasons and a clear plan for how things will be paid for. There are certainly good examples of exploited and underpaid postdoctoral fellows – I know this is especially prevalent in Canada and would love to remedy it. Read more...

By Adam Chapnick. It’s because too many graduates complete their degrees without an ability to articulate what they have learned. Tough economic times are inevitably difficult for supporters of the liberal arts. When governments cut back, they prioritize. And when it comes to education, the STEM disciplines (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) almost inevitably win out. Recently, the Federal Economic Development Agency for Southern Ontario committed over $900,000 to a Youth STEM Initiative. According to the press release that accompanied the announcement, the program was meant “to expand, enhance and coordinate the reach and impact of educational outreach programs in science, technology, engineering and mathematics for children and youth in kindergarten through grade 12.” Read more...

By Patrick J. Monahan. York University modernized its system for choosing academic administrators based on research about what works. Given the increasing competitive pressures and financial challenges facing universities across North America, most academic administrators recognize that strong and effective leadership is a key ingredient for institutional success. Yet, while there has been a proliferation of writing on the topic of what effective academic leadership entails, relatively little scholarly attention has been paid to the selection process for academic leaders. Are there certain kinds of processes or methodologies that are more likely to result in the selection of more successful academic leaders?
Over the last decade, the procedures governing senior academic searches at York University, where I served as a dean and then as provost from 2003 to 2012, have changed considerably. The key driver behind this evolution has been a widely shared desire at the university to improve the reliability and the validity of the academic search process by imparting a greater sense of discipline and rigour. Read more...

By Jean-François Venne. The faculty of medicine has already completed over 30 training missions in the country.
Université de Sherbrooke’s faculty of medicine and health sciences is set to launch three new medical training projects in Haiti, to be carried out in conjunction with Université Quisqueya located in Port-au-Prince. The faculty, which also has initiatives underway in Mali and Uruguay, has already completed 30 training missions in Haiti. “Promoting international cooperation is one of the faculty’s guiding principles,” notes Paul Grand’Maison, director of the faculty’s International Relations Office. “We see it as a matter of social responsibility. It is unthinkable that we should go about our business here at home without any regard for others elsewhere.” Read more...