COMMENTARY

Canada’s Quality Challenge

April 16, 2010

By Ken Snowdon, President, Snowdon & Associates Inc., Harrowsmith, Ontario

The private and public benefits of investing in PSE are recognized by governments across the country.  Our reasonably high PSE participation rates (see StatCan, Education Indicators in Canada: An International Perspective, 2009) are increasingly heralded as a linchpin in Canada’s global competitiveness and a main instrument of internal social mobility. Given that many countries have latched onto the importance of improving PSE participation rates, it is encouraging to see that increasing PSE participation rates further is a common policy goal of provincial governments.

To the extent that many other countries are investing heavily in PSE, however, the reliance on the simple metric of participation rates masks the more important consideration; the quality of the learning experience – a metric that is considerably more difficult to measure than the quantity (participation). As provincial governments struggle with sustaining and improving the investment in higher education to increase the numbers of students, equally important is the need to recognize that what is critical to Canada’s long-term competitiveness and economic well-being is the quality of that educational experience. READ MORE...

Between 1995 and 2005, the student borrowing rate among graduates increased from 49% to
57%, as did the average debt from student loans ($15,200 and $18,800). A small but growing
proportion of borrowers are graduating with debt loads of $25,000 or more.

Source: Statistics Canada

THE NEWS

B.C. uses adviser to find savings at Vancouver school board
By Jonathan Fowlie and Janet Stefenhagen, Vancouver Sun
Education Minister Margaret MacDiarmid appointed B.C.'s comptroller-general as a special adviser to Vancouver's board of education Wednesday, asking her to find savings where the board has failed. "This is a serious situation. We felt it was important to take action," MacDiarmid told reporters in Victoria. "They [members of Vancouver's board of education] have said they're having trouble managing with their budget. They are talking about cutting programs they say are going to jeopardize learning," she said. MacDiarmid asked comptroller-general Cheryl Wenezenki-Yolland to produce a report by the end of May.

Five Edmonton schools to close
By Sarah O’Donnell and Cigdem Iltan, Edmonton Journal
Edmonton public school trustees will close the doors of five schools at the end of June. During a seven-hour meeting that stretched to 1 a.m. Wednesday. Trustees voted to shut down the historic Eastwood, McCauley and Parkdale schools located in the city centre neighbourhoods northeast of downtown, as well as Capilano and Fulton Place Schools in the southeast Hardisty area, built during the baby boom. Trustees also decided to close the elementary program at Spruce Avenue School, so it can serve exclusively junior high students.

Students learn how to make fitness part of their lives
By J.D. Gravenor, The Montreal Gazette
The Lakeside Academy in Lachine recently organized a workout session at a state-of-the-art fitness centre. In all, 80 students in Grade 10 and 11 were bused to the Mansfield Athletic Club, where they enjoyed a three-hour workout. The supervised exercise sessions were divided into three parts. There was core conditioning, a spinning class, and a power yoga session. Lakeside principal Michelle Harper, along with the school’s physical educators, wants to encourage students to embrace fitness as a lifelong goal. And visiting a well-equipped fitness centre seemed to work magic on the students’ motivation.

$35M gift helps create Global Affairs school at University of Toronto
By Louise Brown, The Toronto Star
The two-year Master of Global Affairs will be the first degree offered by the new Munk School of Global Affairs, a professional school born Tuesday out of the prestigious Munk Centre for International Studies, which for 10 years has been a think tank and research hub that could not grant its own degrees. But a $35 million gift from philanthropist Peter Munk and his wife Melanie, announced Tuesday, plus a $25 million capital boost from Queen’s Park, has meant the centre can “transform into a school that can award degrees and hire faculty and bring in senior fellows and create a genuine multidisciplinary degree,” said Professor Janice Stein, who has been the director of the Munk Centre for International Studies.

Algonquin College gets high satisfaction scores
By Matthew Pearson, The Ottawa Citizen
Algonquin College has scored top marks among Ontario's largest colleges in the key areas of student satisfaction, graduate satisfaction and graduate employment rate, according to survey results released Wednesday. The Key Performance Indicators (KPI) survey mandates colleges to collect data annually from students, graduates and employers. Although college-to-college comparisons could produce misleading results because of college size, differing programs and local employment conditions, Algonquin was quick to boast about its high scores.

Universities are sitting ducks for reform
By Margaret Wente, The Globe and Mail
What is the most pressing problem facing Canadian universities today? If you ask the professoriate, the answer is likely to be: massive underfunding, combined with creeping corporatization and growing threats to academic independence. If you ask Dalton McGuinty, Ontario’s Premier, the answer is: poor accountability, and not enough bang for the buck. Last week, he fired a warning shot, saying he plans to have “honest conversations” in the coming months about what universities and colleges can expect in return for the extra money they’re getting to educate another 30,000 students. Translation: You folks are in the service business.

U.S. falls short in measure of future math teachers
By Sam Dillon, The New York Times
America’s future math teachers, on average, earned a C on a new test comparing their skills with their counterparts in 15 other countries, significantly outscoring college students in the Philippines and Chile but placing far below those in educationally advanced nations like Singapore and Taiwan. The researchers who led the math study in this country, to be released in Washington on Thursday, judged the results acceptable if not encouraging for America’s future elementary teachers. But they called them disturbing for American students heading to careers in middle schools, who were outscored by students in Germany, Poland, the Russian Federation, Singapore, Switzerland and Taiwan.

Fewer dropouts, more state students
By Rebecca Attwood, The Times Higher Education
Universities have reduced their dropout rates and succeeded in attracting more students from state schools into higher education, according to new figures. Data published today by the Higher Education Statistics Agency show that among students starting full-time first degrees in the UK in 2007-08, the proportion who had dropped out a year later was 8.6 per cent, down from 9 per cent in 2006-07. Meanwhile, the proportion of young full-time undergraduate entrants from state schools rose to 89 per cent in 2008-09, up from 88.5 per cent the previous year. However, data on changes to the proportion of students from lower socio-economic groups are not available due to a change in the question asked of applicants on the Universities and Colleges Admissions Service form.

Aboriginal urbanites  aspire first to higher education
By Joe Friesen, The Globe and Mail
Roughly half of Canada’s 1.2 million natives, Métis and Inuit now live in cities, and their hopes, values and experiences are the subject of the Urban Aboriginal Peoples Study, a major research survey released today by the Environics Institute. It found that, despite statistics that show significant gaps in aboriginal university and high-school graduation rates, the foremost life aspiration for urban aboriginal people is to pursue higher education. They describe it as a route to empowerment and a way to learn more about their history and culture, topics they say are ignored in the elementary and high-school curricula.

Engaging Faculty and Staff: An Imperative for Fostering Retention, Advising, and Smart Borrowing (February 2008)

Watson Scott Swail with Rebecca Mullen, Hyniea Gardner, and Jeremy Reed