Archive for the ‘Education Delivery System’ Category
It’s time to unify our schools
May 11, 2012
By maintaining separate schools, we perpetuate social and religious division while undermining religious equality and our collective sense of equal citizenship… With a unified school system we could cut the bureaucratic costs in half saving millions… Our separate school system is severely anachronistic and is no longer sound policy in the context of an increasingly diverse and pluralistic Ontario. It’s time we unify the school systems in the interests of equality, civic solidarity, cost savings and basic fairness.
Tags: budget, ideology, rights, standard of living, tax
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On student-to-faculty rations, Ontario goes from worst to even worse
April 26, 2012
Since the mid-1990s, Ontario has had the worst student-to-faculty ratio in Canada. While the number of students per full-time faculty member in other provinces hovered around 20-1, the Ontario ratio rose from 22-1 in the fall of 2000 to 27-1 by 2005-06 as the “double cohort” entered the university system… Even if universities hired as many full-time faculty as they planned in their Multi-Year Accountability Agreements (and the evidence to date suggests they have not), the ratio is now approaching 28 students for each full-time faculty member… to preserve the quality of higher education in Ontario, we need to hire new full-time faculty – and we need to start doing it now.
Tags: budget, ideology, standard of living, youth
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Students should pay for the entire cost of education — later
Apr 20, 2012
… it’s cash flow that’s the issue, not the amount. So: What if, instead of paying tuition now, students could pay it later? That is, what if they were staked all or most of the money up front, and repaid it over the course of their working life? Only what if, instead of repaying principal plus interest in fixed amounts, as with conventional loans, they paid a share of their earnings? As they earned more, they’d pay more; as they earned less, they’d pay less. The model is not new. It’s sometimes called an income contingent loan, or a graduate tax. But in reality, it’s not a loan or a tax. It’s an investment.
Tags: budget, ideology, standard of living, youth
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Calling a cut an ‘increase’
April 5, 2012
Per student funding has in fact been in decline since the financial crisis hit in 2008-09. The budget does nothing to help. By 2014-15, OCUFA projects that public operating funding for universities will drop by 16 per cent. This is a huge loss in revenue that, if left unfilled, will damage the quality of higher education in Ontario. History tells us that institutions will attempt to fill the gap with higher tuition fees, continuing the unsustainable shift of costs onto students.
Tags: budget, standard of living, youth
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It still comes down to fixing the reserves
Mar. 14, 2012
Systems and structures are fine and necessary, as is proper funding. But… results from formal education have more to do with parental attitudes, cultural assumptions about the importance of education and community norms than anything else. Which means that aboriginal education can’t be divorced from its core contextual problem – the reserves themselves that the panel correctly notes display socio-economic and health inequities, poverty, suicides, youth incarceration and abuse, high teen pregnancy rates, lower life expectancy and chronic disease.
Tags: budget, Native, participation, rights, standard of living
Posted in Education Delivery System, Equality Delivery System | No Comments »
Putting the ‘system’ in education for on-reserve students
Feb. 27, 2012
… reserve schools have two major tasks – to teach traditional culture and the core competencies of reading, writing, science and mathematics necessary for success in the mainstream economy. With honourable exceptions, on-reserve schools are failing at both tasks… “The education ‘system’ for first nations students on reserve is a far cry from any system that other Canadians would recognize in terms of … degree of input, accountability, and democratic governance most Canadians take for granted.”
Tags: budget, Native, standard of living, youth
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Drummond promises less money, reduced flexibility for cash-strapped Ontario universities
Feb 23 2012
Even with tuition increasing at around 5 per cent a year, universities are faced each year with a 2-3 per cent gap between expenditures and revenues. Most universities have attempted to close this gap by cutting budgets and taking in more students, resulting in larger class sizes and increasing reliance on part-time faculty… The danger is that the government will see the report as justifying a simple cost-cutting exercise, which will only exacerbate the universities’ unsustainable fiscal position without giving them the tools they need to attempt to deal with the challenges they face.
Tags: budget, economy, ideology, participation, standard of living, youth
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OCUFA analysis of the Drummond Report: all cuts, no substance
Feb. 23, 2012
On the commission’s own assumptions and proposals – 1.7 per cent annual enrolment growth, 1.9 per cent annual inflation, and 1.5 per cent annual increases in post-secondary funding – per student funding will decline by 12 per cent between now and 2017-18… inflation-adjusted provincial funding per college student could fall by $790, and per undergraduate student could decline by almost $940. For graduate students, the reduction could be $2,280.
Tags: budget, economy, ideology, standard of living, youth
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Ontario universities should offer three-year degrees, classes year-round and more online learning, says provincial report
Feb 22 2012
The report — tentatively entitled 3 Cubed: PSE institutions as centres of creativity, competency and citizenship equipped for the 21st century — says post-secondary education needs to be relevant and flexible given the increased demand for college and university. The proposals would get students through university or college cheaper and faster — the report says college diplomas should be two years at most — while still offering a quality post-secondary education… The report says pilot programs for the new three-year degrees should begin in September 2013, with rollout by 2015.
Tags: budget, participation, standard of living, youth
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OCUFA to Drummond: You can’t drive Ontario forward on a half-empty tank
Feb. 16, 2012
Drummond’s chief recommendation is that government funding of universities and colleges be limited to 1.5 per cent per year… this is an effective cut to higher education funding that does not keep pace with enrolment or inflation. Ontario’s universities already receive 25 per cent less per-student funding than they did in 1990; Drummond’s recommendations will make this under-funding even worse.
Tags: budget, standard of living, youth
Posted in Education Delivery System | 1 Comment »
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