Posts from August 2012

On Wednesday, August 29, 2012, OCUFA President Constance Adamson met with Minister of Training, Colleges, and Universities Glen Murray. The purpose of the meeting was to follow-up on the recently completed consultations around the discussion paper, Strengthening Ontario’s Centres of Creativity, Innovation, and Knowledge .   The Minister indicated that the government hopes to announce its plans for higher education in later fall […]

It should come as no surprise that, in a recent BMO survey , more post-secondary students identified paying for their education as a greater source of stress than their academic success or job prospects. With Ontario leading the way, average tuition increases in Canada have outstripped inflation and the share of university operating funding coming from the pockets […]

Last week, OCUFA representatives participated in Government of Ontario consultations at Algonquin College in Ottawa, and at UOIT in Oshawa. The Ottawa session was a full day, and covered a variety of themes. The UOIT session focused on “experiential and entrepreneurial learning”.   As with the other roundtables discussions, there was wide agreement on the […]

There has been much discussion of the Bologna Process – the effort to harmonize Europe’s higher education credentials – in Ontario lately, thanks largely to the Government of Ontario’s desire to create a three-year, Bologna-style credential. Two stories, out earlier this month, suggest that Ontario should be wary of copying the European model. The University World News […]

A recent report from the US Coalition on the Academic Workforce indicates that close to 70 per cent of faculty in the US are members of the contingent academic workforce. Based on a survey of part-time faculty and instructors, it finds that “those increasingly responsible for educating the undergraduates who reap this earnings premium [of an undergraduate […]

On Thursday, August 9, 2012, OCUFA participated in a government consultation on the greater use of technology in Ontario’s universities and colleges, held at the University of Waterloo. The session was part of the Ministry of Training, Colleges, and Universities’ (MTCU) roundtables on ideas contained within the discussion paper, Strengthening Ontario’s Centres of Creativity, Innovation, and Knowledge . Previous consultations, also attended by […]

Since 1992, women have made significant gains in PhD enrolment. However, in certain fields, they continue to lag behind men in employment and median salary.   The recent Statistics Canada report on the career paths of Canadian doctoral graduates echoes an earlier Statistics Canada release that traced the increasing proportion of doctoral students and graduates who are women. Less than a […]

Last week, OCUFA representatives attended roundtable consultations on higher education reform in Ontario. Led by Minister of Training, Colleges, and Universities Glen Murray, the consultations are intended to explore questions and recommendations made in the discussion paper, Strengthening Centres of Creativity, Innovation, and Knowledge .   The sessions are organized around four themes, each extracted from the discussion paper: Quality Teaching and […]