By Brian Lee Crowley. Student debt and education savings plan. These two issues are on the minds of many Canadians this week as universities roll into another academic year. Many students are contemplating the debt load they will take on to earn their degree, while parents weigh the forgone income that goes into savings plans for postsecondary schooling. More...
By Gary Mason. Thousands of young Canadians headed off to university this week, many worrying about the amount of debt they were amassing in the process. The often meagre amounts saved from summer jobs don’t come close to paying for a year at school. And unless they have parents helping them out, loans are essential. If you’re in graduate school, lines of credit from a bank are often needed to cover costs. More...
By Gavin Moodie. Ontario has been considering whether and how to differentiate its universities since 2010 when its deputy minister of Training, Colleges, and Universities, Deborah Newman, commissioned a study, The benefits of greater differentiation of Ontario’s university sector from the Higher Education Quality Council of Ontario. HEQCO’s most recent contribution, A data set to inform the differentiation discussion, released in July, is both helpful and unhelpful in advancing the discussion. While it is an example of differentiation informed by data, it ignores its own admonition in its report three years ago by grouping Ontario universities on only one dimension, research intensity. More...
By Karen Birchard. Students will have to achieve various “milestones” before moving on to next level. A new era in Canadian medical education is underway as it switches from a primarily time-based learning system to one where core competency levels, dubbed “milestones,” must be achieved and demonstrated by students before they move on. The system is being phased in over the remainder of this decade, with a few residency specialties testing the new approach this fall as part of a pilot program. Although not yet officially announced, those specialties in the pilot program could be anesthesiology, medical oncology, pediatric surgery and plastic surgery. It’s not a simple task to bring change to the entire profession, nor will it happen overnight. More...
By Steven Davis. At a recent event at Rideau Hall, hosted by Governor-General David Johnston, the Mastercard Foundation announced that it was providing $75-million dollars to three Canadian universities – the University of Toronto, the University of British Columbia and McGill – to educate 270 African students over the next ten years. It appears to be win-win. The universities get a much needed infusion of cash and the students get an education in some of the world’s best universities. More...
MOOC Convenes Educators, Employers, and Workforce Developers to Explore Role and Impact of Badges for Academic and Workplace Credential.
The WICHE Cooperative for Educational Technologies (WCET), Mozilla, Blackboard Inc., and Sage Road Solutions LLC will convene a massive, open, online course (MOOC)beginning September 9, 2013, to explore the role that badges are expected to play as academic institutions and employers scramble for new ways to document completion, competency and achievement. During its six-week duration, MOOC participants from around the world will use a variety of distributed technologies to connect and learn more about how to design, use and support these new systems for creating quality professional credentials. Read more...
By . Now that MOOCs are hitting the scene, everyone wants to jump on board! Granted, some want to get into the game in the hopes of making a quick dollar (somehow?), but others genuinely want to know how they can create their own MOOC for educational purposes. Well, you have options!
More providers are likely to spring up as we will only cover five potential options. As the entire MOOC industry evolves, expect to see more options at your disposal for this kind of thing. Kind of like when Wikipedia hit the scenes, we saw an influx of “Wikipedia-like” sites, templates, and software. More...
By Barbara Kaufman. Today's college or university president must be a champion fundraiser and a strong internal leader
Gone are the days when the hire of a university president was based primarily on a lifetime of scholarship and academic credentials that resonated with faculty. Gone, too, are the days when the president was expected to focus on internal governance and maintaining the institution's status quo. Increasingly, university leaders are under relentless pressure to raise private funds to protect and grow colleges and universities. And while for the president fundraising is often experienced as another full-time role, the effort must be balanced with the challenging demands of campus leadership. More...
By Matt Zalaznick. More than a third of higher ed leaders "very concerned" about maintaining enrollment, survey says.
College enrollment plummeted by half a million students in fall 2012 after several years of strong growth, the U.S. Census Bureau says. The number of graduate and undergraduate students fell last year after increasing by 3.2 million between 2006 and 2011. The decline was led by a drop of 419,000 in students 25 and older. The number of young students fell by only 48,000. More...
America’s immigration system does not meet our needs and has not done so for years. A recent study found that reform measures like those featured in the bill just passed by the U.S. Senate would add $903 million to the North Carolina economy and create over 11,000 jobs – in the first year alone. I am hopeful that the U.S. House of Representatives can seize the opportunity that will lie before it and pass a workable immigration reform plan this year. More...
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