The Conference Board of Canada recently reported on this country’s innovation record, with Canada ranking thirteenth of the sixteen countries considered. While Canada got a grade of “B” for public spending on research and development (R&D), Canadian business got a “D” for its efforts and ranked second from last. The report observes that Canadian business expenditures on (R&D) [Read More…]
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The voice of Ontario’s university professors and academic librarians
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Committed to enhancing the quality of university education in Ontario
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Advancing the professional and economic interests of faculty and academic librarians at Ontario universities
Last week, we reported that the Council of Ontario Universities was developing a new consortium to develop online learning in Ontario . On April 18th, the COU made additional details available on the online learning initiative. Ontario Universities Online (OUO) will seek to “expand online learning for students in the province and beyond” and “meet the growing demand for courses and programs delivered outside the [Read More…]
On Tuesday, April 15, 2013, a pre-conference event was held for the Worldviews Conference on Media and Higher Education . Titled “The War on Knowledge?” the event brought together several experts to discuss if and how mass media might be challenging – or even attacking – the university. The panel featured Melonie Fullick, a PhD candidate in York’s Faculty of Education; Clifford Orwin, [Read More…]
The high cost of a postsecondary education is borne not only by those who complete their degrees. A recent study by the US National Center for Education Statistics examined the federal student loan burden of American students who had not completed college or university in 2001 and 2009, and found they owed comparatively more, in addition to [Read More…]
The Council of Ontario Universities (COU) is working to establish a new online learning consortium , in order to “keep Ontario universities at the forefront in the use of technology to advance teaching and learning and improve students’ access to online courses and programs.” The new initiative, Ontario Universities Online (OUO), recently seconded Cathy Kelly, Director of the University of Waterloo’s Centre for [Read More…]
Johnny El-Alam, a PhD candidate in visual culture at Carleton University, has produced a video through the Social Science and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) Storyteller program . This initiative seeks to “show Canadians how the very best ideas in the social sciences and humanities—research about people, behaviour, human thought and culture—are helping us understand and improve the [Read More…]
Over on the Inside Agenda Blog , there is an excellent piece by Emmett Macfarlane, a professor at the University of Waterloo. In it, he explains that there is a need for universities to be innovative, but that the current proposals for change (such as MOOCs or teaching-only institutions) are not the panaceas they are made out to [Read More…]
In a paper released today , the Higher Education Quality Council of Ontario (HEQCO) reviews the performance of Ontario’s postsecondary education system in terms of access, quality, productivity, and social impact. It confirms what Ontario’s professors and academic librarians have known for years – our universities are efficient, productive, and accessible (though more work is needed to [Read More…]
A lower cap on tuition sounds nice, but lurking beneath is a more ominous cap on government funding. The new tuition framework, announced last week by the Ontario government, won’t change the fact that tuition fees for at Ontario’s universities are already the highest in Canada. For the next four years, universities can hike tuition for graduate students by five [Read More…]
The McMaster University Faculty Association (MUFA) has ratified a new, four-year agreement with their administration. The new deal includes a 1% pension offset in year one; a lump sum of $1250 and a 1% pension offset in year two; and 1.5% increases in year three and four, with lump sums of $1850 and $1925 respectively. [Read More…]