Category: Canada

The New AUCC

Reading through a couple of recent AUCC initiatives – notably: the “five commitments”and its new brochure on the value of universities, it occurred to me how much AUCC’s focus seems to have changed in the last few years. Though it hasn’t really been remarked upon, there seems to be a slow but dramatic shift in the way higher education lobbying occurs in Ottawa. As late as 2000, AUCC still had an unrivalled lobbying presence in Ottawa. Individual institutions were starting

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Why are Toronto Students so Friggin’ Miserable (Part 5)

Last week in our series on student satisfaction (and Toronto students’ lack thereof) we looked at how students’ perception of institutional character – specifically, things like having applied curricula, seeming open to new ideas and offering a supportive environment – correlated with student satisfaction. This week, we’re still on the issue of character, but students’ own characters rather than those of their institutions. The 2012 Canadian University Report survey asked students how much they agreed, on a one to nine

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Financial Illiteracy

Last week I joined researchers, policymakers and innovative practitioners at the HEQCO Fear of Finance: Financial Literacy and Planning for Post-Secondary Education conference. Kudos to the HEQCO team for putting on a fantastically relevant conference that brought these diverse groups together; it doesn’t happen very often, and it was engaging for participants step out of our usual silos for a couple of days. I presented on what I call financial aid literacy in PSE; that is, what students and their parents

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Why Are Toronto Students so Friggin’ Miserable? (Part Quatre)

To date, we’ve been musing about the causes of Toronto students’ dissatisfaction. But let’s put the shoe on the other foot for a bit: what causes student satisfaction to begin with? One thing we ask in the Globe Canadian University Report survey is students’ perceptions about a number of dimensions of the character of their institution. For instance, we ask them if they think their institution’s curriculum is more theoretical or applied, whether the institution is broadly-based or focuses on

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The Trouble with Sniping

Much of the HESA staff was in Fredericton last week at the annual meeting of the Canadian Institutional Research and Planning Association where, as usual, a good and informative time was had by all (hat tip to the CIRPA organizing committee). But something happened there which bothered me quite a bit: namely, a keynote address in which ACCC President Jim Knight began taking gratuitous potshots at the university sector. I’ve been wondering ever since if this was just an off-night

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