Archive for the ‘Education Delivery System’ Category

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Needed: Smart education spending in Ontario

Wednesday, April 8th, 2015

In total, public school enrolment in Ontario dropped from 2.16 million in 2001-02 to 2.04 million in 2011-12, a 5.5 per cent decrease. Spending on public schools in Ontario increased 62.4 per cent… on a per student basis… 72 per cent, from $7,047 to $12,117. Yet dramatic increases in spending aren’t necessarily associated with increases in achievement.

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Private school students do fare better — but it’s mainly because of their parents: study

Tuesday, March 31st, 2015

The roughly 6% of Canadian teenagers who attend private schools — from the grandest boarding school for the global elite to the most modest independent religious school — gain advantages that only increase as the students continue into higher and graduate education… parents of private school students had incomes 25% higher… 10% of public school students had a parent who completed a graduate or professional degree, compared with 25% of private school students.

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Strikes reflect awkward realities of Ontario university finances

Wednesday, March 18th, 2015

Real revenue per student has been going up… but costs have been going up faster than the CPI. Every year there is a gap between revenues and costs of about one to two per cent. So every year, some retiring full-time professors are not replaced and budget cuts must be made across all activities… Presidents, professors, and graduate students are well paid. Part-time instructors not so well. And it is they who must cobble together an annual living on course-by-course contracts…

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Why U of T, York strikes are more than labour disputes

Thursday, March 5th, 2015

Underpaid part-time staff teach a majority of undergraduates in Canada. For example, at U of T contract faculty and teaching assistants do 60 per cent of the teaching but make up 3.5 per cent of the budget… the number of contract faculty in Ontario increased 87 per cent in between 2000 and 2014… Paying the people who do the majority of teaching a salary that is above the poverty line won’t solve all the problems in academia, but it sure would be a good place to start.

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University labour strife underscores cost of tenured academics

Wednesday, March 4th, 2015

… most universities have decided that, to staff their classrooms at reasonable cost, they must turn, in varying degrees, to contract instructors and teaching-track faculty… An explosion in undergraduate enrolments across Canada – 400,000 more students from 2002 to 2012 – has come without a corresponding increase in tenure-track faculty. While the number of professors doubled between the 1980s and 2006, there was a decline of 10 per cent in tenure and tenure-track faculty.

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One vision of tomorrow’s college: Cheap, and you get an education, not a degree

Saturday, February 21st, 2015

The international learning communities that develop in the virtual education world will have enormous advantages of scale. They will be inexpensive and at certain levels of access, entirely free. Millions of people simultaneously enrolled in a course of study will create data that is analyzable at great depths of sophistication. In addition to customizing the environment for each learner, in a way that reacts to what they bring to the environment and how they proceed to learn, educational designers will also be able to shape the way students interact with one another,

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Literacy, numeracy among Canadian graduates better than OECD claimed

Tuesday, November 4th, 2014

… About half of [Canada’s high proportion of graduates who are foreign-born or have degrees from institutions outside the country] had test scores at lower levels. In contrast, only 16 per cent of Canadian-born graduates showed poor literacy skills and 23 per cent had low levels of numeracy. The new data give postsecondary institutions much-needed ammunition against critics who are questioning whether graduates are leaving university ready for employment.

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University is actually quite cheap – it just doesn’t look that way

Tuesday, August 26th, 2014

Every year, Canadian governments provide over $2-billion in tax credits, over $1-billion in grants and nearly $1-billion in loan remission to reduce the costs of education to students and their parents. All that money reduces the actual costs significantly… but most of that money comes at the back end, months after students really need it in order to pay for tuition… there are too many players in the game, using too many different funding vehicles.

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What’s old is new again with the Ontario Budget

Wednesday, July 16th, 2014

Funding per “eligible” student… will fall 7.5 per cent over the next three years… real per student provincial funding has been falling since 2008-09… By the end of the current planning horizon, it would be its lowest since the higher education system began its expansion in the 1960s… Ontario will remain in last place in operating funding per student compared to other Canadian provinces, and continue to have the highest student-to-faculty ratios in the country. We’re educating more students with less money than ever before.

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Tenure protects academic freedom

Friday, June 13th, 2014

Professors in Ontario teach more students for less money than almost anywhere else in North America. Our province has the highest student-to-faculty ratio and the lowest level of per-student funding in Canada. We also lag behind most peer jurisdictions in the U.S. on these important indicators. While student enrolment has increased by 68 per cent over the last decade the number of full-time faculty has only risen by 34 per cent. The problem is not too little teaching. It is too few full-time professors.

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