Archive for August, 2011
Queen’s reaches tentative deal with faculty
Strike won’t occur if agreement is ratified
Queen’s University and its faculty association reached a tentative agreement on Monday afternoon.
That means there won’t be a strike or lockout anytime soon.
The deal still must be ratified by both sides, but it has the support of Paul Young, the Queen’s University Faculty Association president. QUFA represents 1,200 professors and librarians.
“It’s a sufficiently good agreement,” he told the Whig-Standard newspaper. ”I think it’s pretty reasonable, given the circumstances and the economic climate.”
Queen’s officials presented the union with the offer around 4 a.m. Monday, four hours after the strike deadline had passed. The union executive came to a consensus Monday afternoon.
Principal Daniel Woolf said he was “absolutely delighted” that a tentative agreement was reached. “This was a very challenging rounds of talks,” he said.
Details about the agreement aren’t yet available, but Young had previously said that pensions, pay and job security were some of the union’s concerns.
Quebec’s young Liberals support tuition hike
Large protests outside meeting in Sherbrooke
Quebec’s young Liberals declared their support for tuition hikes, their desire for an independent body to investigate police shootings in Montreal and support for a ban on tanning salons for youth at their meeting in Sherbrooke this weekend. Meanwhile, hundreds of other students protested outside the meeting as Premier Jean Charest addressed the audience inside.
They were protesting Charest’s plan to raise the tuition cap from roughly $2,200 to roughly $3,800 a year. The plan prompted a large protest in April at which five people were arrested.
Marie-Pier Isabelle, President of the Quebec Young Liberals told CBC News: “There are ways to have a hike that is intelligent and that permit us to maintain accessibility to post-secondary education while maintaining the quality of our universities.”
Canadian schools shine in global ranking
Does your university fall in the World Universities Top 500?
The University of Toronto ranks 26th worldwide.
The Shanghai Jiao Tong Academic Ranking of World Universities (ARWU) is well-respected, mainly because the annual Chinese study uses six objective criteria to compare schools. The rankers consider every university in the world that has at least one Nobel Laureate, fields medalist, highly-cited researcher or researcher published in Nature or Science. Indeed, those criteria make up most of their methodology, which can bias the rankings toward science-intensive, anglophone schools.
Canada does quite well again this year, with its Top 100 schools all falling fairly close to where they were five years ago. And despite having only one in 200 of the world’s people, we have four of the world’s Top 100 schools. That ratio is beat only by the U.S., which has 52 per cent of the world’s Top 100 schools, but just 4.5 per cent of the global population and the United Kingdom, which has 10 per cent of the Top 100 schools, but just one per cent of the world’s people.
The study also reaffirms the University of Toronto’s place as global research powerhouse. No school from Australia, France, Germany, China, Israel or Scandinavia beat the University of Toronto, which is at number 26. In the Top 25, the U.S. has 20 winners, the U.K. has three. Japan and Switzerland have one each. Here’s a list of the 23 Canadian schools that made the Top 500.
26. University of Toronto (24. in 2006)
37. University of British Columbia (36. in 2006)
64. McGill University (62. in 2006)
89. McMaster University (90. in 2006)
101-200. University of Alberta, University of Montreal, University of Calgary and University of Waterloo
201-300. Dalhousie University, Laval University, Queen’s University, Simon Fraser University, University of Western Ontario, University of Guelph, University of Manitoba, University of Ottawa, University of Victoria and University of Saskatchewan
401-500. Carleton University, University of Quebec, University of Sherbrooke and York University
Want more rankings? For the results of the Maclean’s 20th Annual University Rankings, click here. For the QS World Rankings by subject, click here, here and here.
Cashing in on foreign students
Public schools compete for high-paying international students
Last year, Patricia Gartland, who works for a suburban Vancouver school district, brought in $16 million selling 1,700 B.C. classroom spots to foreign students, largely from China and South Korea. Gartland, who started her job as director of international education with the Coquitlam School District in suburban Vancouver over 10 years ago, has made the program in Vancouver one of the most extensive in Canada and the envy of the scores of districts across the country looking to cash in on the growing market for international students.
With international students paying $10,000 to $14,000 to attend Canadian schools, public school administrators across the country are setting up for-profit international student programs to compete for their dollars. One 2009 study estimated some 35,000 foreign students in the K-12 system contribute almost $700 million annually to the Canadian economy—a win-win for students, who get an invaluable leg-up when applying to North American post-secondary schools, as well as district administrators, who make up to 50 per cent profit on the tuition.
International student programs aren’t new to Canada, but at the K-12 level they’re rarely talked about, although most provinces have had programs for at least a decade. No province has been more successful at bringing in international students than B.C., with some 9,000. Capitalizing on the demand for a Western diploma and an English-language education, B.C. schools compete with Britain, the U.S. and Australia to recruit students overseas. School districts send staff abroad to meet foreign school officials and to attend trade shows. Domestically, the districts liaise with the Lower Mainland’s tight-knit Chinese and Korean communities, looking for overseas relatives. Once in Canada, the students live with extended family or billets. The students are offered supplementary language classes in tandem with regular studies, though eventually most opt for the standard curriculum.
B.C. has offered an international student program since the ’80s, but recruitment intensified after 2001, according to the British Columbia Teachers’ Federation, when the government made cuts to the education system. “School boards were short $275 million,” says BCTF president Susan Lambert. New legislation, she says, “encouraged them to find alternative sources of funding.”
In 2002, Gordon Campbell’s Liberal government passed the School Amendment Act; the bill, seen by some academic experts as a move to embrace a marketized version of public education, cast school districts as business corporations, they say, and parents and students as consumers. By 2007-08, international student enrolment in B.C. peaked at 9,500 students, with an associated revenue of $129 million. But critics say that what’s emerging is a two-tier public education system that punishes the districts that need the most help.
Larry Kuehn, research director at BCTF, reports international student programs exacerbate existing inequalities in the public system by making the richest districts—those that can afford to invest in overseas recruitment—richer, and leaving poorer districts in the dust. Ultimately, says Kuehn, the programs are outside equalization factors in the provincial funding system built to circumvent such wealth disparity. Take Coquitlam, Gartland’s school board, where international student money has kept enrolment high and schools open, and afforded new development opportunities for staff and “very robust” student services, including a Confucius classroom and the first bilingual Mandarin kindergarten class in the province. “I’m wondering at the irony of an education system that says if you’re a for-profit school we’re not going to give you any funding at all but as a public school we’re going to allow you to sell to foreigners,” says Peter Cowley, education policy researcher at the Fraser Institute. “We have seen school districts in B.C. establishing for-profit companies.”
The B.C. Ministry of Education, however, rejects the notion that district inequality is an issue. “Each district has the choice of whether to offer such programs,” wrote B.C. Education Minister George Abbott in an email to Maclean’s. “Our school districts have both the autonomy and the responsibility for international student programs.”
So the districts that can recruit international students hope to emulate Coquitlam or West Vancouver, where foreign students bring in the equivalent of 16.4 per cent of its operating budget. It may not be the traditional portrait of public education, but it could be the future. In Ontario, for example, the number of international secondary students increased by six per cent between 2007-08 and 2009-10.
Back in Coquitlam, Gartland is developing student markets outside of Asia. But for now, she’s sanguine. :Suddenly everyone understands all the great benefits of this,” says Gartland. “Our mayor of Coquitlam says our program is bigger than the casino.”
Queen’s faculty strike deadline passes
Union executive is considering university’s offer
A strike deadline passed at Queen’s University this morning at 12:01 a.m. without a deal between the faculty association and administrators, reports the Kingston Whig-Standard.
However, at 5:30 a.m., Queen’s released the following statement: “The mediator advises that the talks between Queen’s and QUFA have been adjourned to allow the union negotiating committee the opportunity to meet with the QUFA executive to consider the employer’s offer. The parties will continue under the communication blackout until the conclusion of the meeting.”
The Queen’s University Faculty Association (QUFA) represents nearly 1,200 professors, librarians and archivists. The union received a strike mandate on July 15.
Job security, pensions and wages are issues of concern, QUFA’s Paul Young told the Whig-Standard on Sunday. ”We are very much focused on a negotiated agreement, that’s for sure,” Ellie Sadinsky told the paper on behalf of the administration.
Texas first to require vaccine for students
Rare disease kills 10 per cent of victims: Health Canada
Photo courtesy of skippyjon on Flickr
Texas is the first state to require that everyone who attends college in person be vaccinated against meningococcal meningitis (also known as bacterial meningitis), reports the Texas Tribune.
Gov. Rick Perry signed the bill in May and it will take effect in January 2012. One Republican state representative, Charlie Howard, lost a son to the disease and supported the bill. But other Republicans saw the new law as an intrusion into family health decisions and therefore opposed it.
Meningococcal meningitis is rare, but often deadly or debilitating. It kills roughly 10 per cent of those who get sick and causes permanent damage, such as deafness, in another 10 per cent, says Health Canada. The number of cases reported in Canada ranges from 160 to 350 per year. There was an outbreak of the disease in 2001.
Continue reading Texas first to require vaccine for students
Youth suicides rise in step with film suicides
Authors blame PG-13 rating for increasingly graphic portrayals
Photo courtesy of HaoJan on Flickr
Authors of a report from the Annenberg Public Policy Center have shown a correlation between the dramatic rise in the portrayal of graphic suicides on film and the increase in the youth suicide rate.
Their study looked at 855 films produced between 1950 to 2006 and found that the number of explicit representations of suicide had tripled over the period. That increase paralleled the tripling of suicide by young people aged 15 to 24 in the U.S. from 1960 to 1990.
“While we cannot establish a causal connection here, it is interesting to note that the tripling of U.S. teen suicide since 1960 coincided with this increase in movie suicide portrayal,” Patrick E. Jamieson, the lead author, said in a press release.
Continue reading Youth suicides rise in step with film suicides
Memorial boots man who stabbed student
Chinese student was studying English language
Memorial University has chosen to suspend Qiang Tang, the 23-year-old student from China who stabbed a fellow student in March. He won’t be able to re-apply until August 2012.
Tang pleaded guilty to assault causing bodily harm after he fought with a fellow student who he accused of speaking too loudly in class. He was given a year of house arrest by a St. John’s judge last month, but the school was left to decide whether he could return to campus.
Citizen and Immigration Canada are investigating to decide whether to deport Tang.
The bicycle thieves are arrested
Baiting programs are cutting down on theft
Photo courtesy of Simply Bike on Flickr
Students wallets, laptops and bikes are common targets of professional thieves.
So it’s encouraging to read that four bicycle thieves have been caught and charged at the University of Saskatchewan. None of those charged were against students and, in this case, the culprits were youths.
Even better news: The Sheaf reports that the number of bikes reported stolen on campus has fallen from roughly 75 to 100 per year a decade ago to around 15 per year. That’s because Campus Safety officers have fought back against with “bait bikes” that lure theives.
RCMP at the University of British Columbia, which has a persistent problem with thefts from lockers, has introduced a “bait locker” program.
We can only hope other schools follow suit.
10 things I wish I’d known in my first year of university
Secrets to success from the editor of Maclean’s On Campus
Photo courtesy of poptech on Flickr
This probably isn’t the advice your mother would give you. She’s going to tell you to get involved as much as possible, to do all of your readings and to stick with whatever degree you’ve chosen. But as someone who graduated with a master’s degree in 2010, I think I know better than mom about what works and what doesn’t. Here are the Top 10 things that I wish I’d known in first year.
1. Meet your professors in person.
Guess how many e-mails a professor who teaches your 600-student course receives each week? It’s a lot of e-mails. That’s why it’s important to make personal connections by visiting them during office hours or by asking them questions after a lecture that particularly grabbed your interest.
Continue reading 10 things I wish I’d known in my first year of university
Should universities hire “visible minorities”?
Professor Pettigrew proposes a commonsense alternative
Having served on many university hiring committees, I have always been mildly troubled by the term “visible minorities,” a term often seen in job ads.
So I was not entirely outraged when I learned that folks down at the UN are upset with how Canadians throw that term around.
Admittedly, it’s frustrating to see an anti-racist policy critiqued for supposedly racist language. Indeed, so many terms are politically charged that it’s hard to know what constitutes appropriate care and what constitutes politically-correct nitpicking. Is “cotton-pickin’” a racist term? Is “pork barrell“? Is “boy“?
Frustrating as it is, we shouldn’t dismiss such concerns. After all, many terms that seemed unobjectionable or even progressive in the past now seem awkward if not offensive. I remember wincing when my grandmother said “coloured” and wondering why she couldn’t say “black” like civilized people. Except that, now, civilized people are increasingly uncomfortable with “black.” I wouldn’t be surprised if my grandchildren find it hard to believe that anyone could ever have used a term so insensitive as “African Canadian.”
The knock against “visible minority” is that it arguably identifies white as the standard, normal way to be, and places non-white people in some lesser, “other” category. But isn’t the whole point of equitable hiring practices to acknowledge that white men really have been seen as the standard and that women and minorities have, for this reason, been unfairly disadvantaged? You can’t make the problem go away by getting rid of terms that identify the problem.
Some prefer a term like “racialized communities” but I’m not convinced it’s any better than what we have now. To my ear, it seems to imply that certain groups have had their ethnic or racial origins imposed upon them and that their identities are merely a mark of their oppression — rather than a heritage of which they can be proud. You’d be fine, if you hadn’t been racialized. It sounds wrong.
Still, “visible minority” leaves a lot to be desired. For one thing, what about invisible minorities? Jewish people have suffered through long periods of oppression, and anti-Semitism is not a thing of the past — but while there may be cultural cues that might indicate that a candidate is Jewish, I doubt most Jewish candidates would self-identify as a visible minority. What about gay applicants? They are part of a disadvantaged minority, but, again, not a visible one.
Still further, exactly how visible does one’s minority status have to be to be a member of a visible minority? I have met many Canadians who identify as Aboriginals, but whose physical characteristics are not stereotypically “native.” Are they still members of visible minorities? Is a blond aboriginal person less entitled to affirmative action than a dark-haired aboriginal person?
Perhaps it’s time to simply invite candidates to indicate, if they choose, whether they believe that elements of their identity have disadvantaged them in some way. Then, hiring committees could take those disadvantages into account during the vetting process. It’s not a perfect solution, but at least we could stop trying to come up with a term that includes certain people but not others while implying only positive things.
After all, even if we came up with such a term, it’s going to sound wrong twenty years from now.
Some students find high-paying summer jobs
Click to find out which programs they’re taking
The first-ever detailed analysis of summer jobs in Canada shows that students from some programs are finding high-paying work that will help launch their careers. Others are working low-skilled jobs and barely breaking minimum wage.
Those in math, computer science, engineering and other technical fields are making much more cash than arts and humanities students, according to the CanEd Student Research Panel’s study. And nearly half of them say their jobs are related to their education. Those in engineering and architecture programs are making the most money, averaging $15.62 per hour.
That’s $4 per hour more than arts and humanities students are making. Those students are barely beating Ontario’s minimum wage of $10.25. What’s worse? Two-thirds of them say their jobs have little to do with what they’re studying.
For more, see the post by Joey Berger of Higher Education Strategy Associates on CanadianBusiness.com.
Former sex worker found dead
Wendy Babcock was advocate for safer sex work
Wendy Babcock, a prostitue-turned-law school student, has been found dead at the age of 32 in her Toronto home.
Babcock gained attention in 2009 after she progressed from homeless teenage prostitute to advocate for safer sex work and then to law student at York University’s Osgoode Hall Law School.
A police spokesperson said there were no signs of foul play, reports the Toronto Star.
Babcock had attempted suicide on several occasions.
Among her achievements was the founding of a group that compiles information on bad sex work clients and her work with Street Health, which prompted an award from former Toronto mayor David Miller.
Babcock was raised in an abusive home and began selling sex at age 15. Her work forced her to give up her son to social services. Eventually, she quit prostitution and attended George Brown College. After succeeding there, she gained admission to Osgoode Hall, despite not having the required university credits. She had successfully completed the first two years of the four-year degree when she was found dead.
There’s nothing political about stealing sneakers
Don’t blame the U.K. riots on unemployment or tuition costs
Photo courtesy of mastermaq on Flickr
Eyes were on the Arab world earlier this year as waves of demonstrations catalyzed national revolutions. Civilians took to the street in revolt of brutal dictatorships, corrupt governments and the general lack of basic human rights. As protesters in the Middle East fought with their lives to achieve a better standard of living, there were those of us in the West—equipped with makeshift stop signs and a total lack of perspective—who dreamed that we would see our own Arab Spring. The way to overthrow a democratically elected government is civil disobedience, you see, and rogue acts the key to beginning the process.
And it seems those rogue acts are indeed underway, though not in Canada as a wistful Brigette DePape had once hoped. Rather, several cities in the UK have been set ablaze over the past several days as rioting has spread across England.
But in England, there’s no united cause or discernible reason. That doesn’t mean that explanations haven’t been offered. It started with protests in Tottenham after a man was killed by police nearly one week ago. But the violence has continued to spread.
While few pundits condone the acts of violence, many have offered their own socio-economic explanations. Guardian journalist Stafford Scott says that the behaviour of the rioters should come as no surprise, since restlessness among British youth, especially in impoverished areas, has been provoked by widespread institutional racism, bitter job prospects, the rising cost of tuition and other barriers to education. Scott explains the destruction of property as simply symptomatic of the nihilism among British youth. “On Saturday, instead of imploding and turning inward and violent among themselves,” Scott writes, “the youths exploded.”
Another Guardian writer, Nina Power, is of a similar mind, suggesting that those condemning the acts of violence ought to look at the “bigger picture” of a country with a struggling economy, poor social mobility, and ever-widening gap between rich and poor.
The trouble is, this “bigger picture” is not on the minds of those committing the crimes. Rioters interviewed by the BBC have blamed everything and everyone from the police, to the government, “rich people,” and conservatives, and many—by their own admission—blame no one at all. There are videos of looters grabbing handfuls of clothes and shoes from broken windows, hooded men and women running from shops carrying away flat screen TVs, and one particularly abhorrent capture of a mob stealing a Sony PSP from an injured student on the street. There’s nothing political about stealing a Playstation from a bleeding man.
While there may be very real causes for social unrest in Britain, this recent destruction is not about politics, tuition or unemployment. Protesters who loathe corporatism and big business don’t torch mom-and-pop shops in their local neighbourhoods, nor do they claim to be “getting their taxes back” as they loot from local shops.
And many of the rioters, in fact, are not disadvantaged youth, but 30-something teachers, youth workers, and graphic designers. To ponder socio-economic excuses for these crimes is to give those who have succumbed to mob mentality a political agenda to fall back on. This civil disobedience is not about changing policy. It’s about a moral breakdown — and free sneakers.
Rebecca Black leaves school due to bullying
Teen has received death threats
The 13-year-old pop star who was made famous by what some consider the worst music video ever made has left high school due to bullying, her mother told ABC News. She has also received death threats.
Rebecca Black became famous after the video she paid $4,000 to have produced went viral. It has now passed 170 million views on YouTube, but “Friday” has also been highly criticized for its simplistic lyrics and the heavy use of voice-modifying software.
Although her mother wouldn’t elaborate on what students in her high school had said, Black has faced extremely harsh comments on YouTube. One of the most hurtful to Black read: ”I think you should get an eating disorder because that will make you prettier.”
But it’s not only bullying that has caused her to shift into homeschooling. Black has been too busy for regular schooling. She recently appeared in the Katy Perry music video, Last Friday Night, received an award at the MTV Awards and filmed the video for her new single, My Moment.
Female science profs less satisfied
Nearly half say they have fewer children than desired
Photo courtesy of jeremy.wilburn on Flickr
A new study in PLoS One found that women working in science are less satisfied than their male counterparts in a number of ways.
Most striking is the fact that 45 per cent of female science faculty members said they have fewer children than they desire, compared to only 25 per cent of male science faculty members.
Similarly, more female faculty said they have trouble balancing work and family life — 48 per cent versus 32 per cent.
The study also showed that women are slightly less satisfied with their incomes and slightly more dissatified with their working hours than their male colleagues are. They also claim to work one hour more per week on average than men (56 hours versus 55 hours).
The findings may help to explain why fewer women are attracted to jobs in science. Just last week, the U.S. Department of Commerce published a study that showed that women hold only 24 per cent of STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Medicine) jobs, despite making up nearly 50 per cent of the workforce.
The PLoS researchers surveyed 1,302 faculty across 100 science departments.
Vanier Scholarships by the numbers
Which schools got the most $150,000 research awards?
Stephen Harper presented 167 Vanier Graduate Scholarships last week at McMaster University. At $150,000 apiece, they’re the most highly sought after prizes for doctoral students studying in Canada.
Schools may only nominate a set number of students based how much money they have received in the past, which gives established PhD programs a clear advantage.
That said, the distribution of the awards tells us something about where the country’s most highly sought after researchers have chosen to study. Here’s the school-by-school breakdown.
Toronto — 28
British Columbia — 25
McGill — 25
Montréal — 12
Alberta — 11
Ottawa — 9
Calgary — 8
McMaster — 6
Western Ontario — 6
Waterloo — 5
Simon Fraser — 4
Laval — 4
Polytechnique Montréal — 3
Queen’s — 3
Dalhousie — 2
UQAM — 2
York — 2
Guelph — 2
Manitoba — 2
Victoria — 1
Concordia — 1
Sherbrooke — 1
Trent — 1
Regina — 1
Saskatchewan — 1
Saint Mary’s — 1
Confucius Institutes break human rights rules
Profs working in Canada “must have no record of Falun Gong”
Photo courtesy of IvanWalsh.com on Flickr
A rule imposed by Confucius Institutes — an educational arm of the Chinese government that operates on at least eight Canadian campuses — breaks “all human rights codes in Canada,” human rights lawyer Clive Ansley told The Epoch Times.
The main CI website says that overseas volunteer Chinese teachers must have “no record of participation in Falun Gong,” a spiritual practice with roots in Buddhism and Taoism. China’s government vehemently opposes the practice and has arrested and killed many adherents, according to Amnesty International.
Barb Pollock, vice president of external relations at the University of Regina, told The Epoch Times that she did not know about the rule, but promised that her school’s agreements with China “have everything to do with academic freedom.” She also said that although teachers are selected by their Chinese partner, Hunan University, “what they teach [here] is our business.”
In June, the University of Manitoba rejected the idea of a Confucius Institute on campus. The University of British Columbia has also declined. But more than 320 exist worldwide, where they offer credit and non-credit courses in language and history.
China says that the funding of CIs—$150,000 initially and up to $200,000 per year after that— is meant to promote cultural understanding. But along with the money, schools have signed constitutions that say that “institute activities must … respect cultural customs, and shall not contravene concerning laws and regulations in Canada and China.”
Terry Russell, an Asian Studies professor at Manitoba, says that such rules compromise academic freedom, because academics are dissuaded from discussing Taiwan, Tibet, Falun Gong, or the Tiananmen Square massacre. That could result in an unrealistically positive view of China among the students who pass through the credit courses they offer in Canada, he says.
Is student debt the next financial bubble?
Moody’s warns that student loan lending is unsustainable
Photo courtesy of Duckie Monster on Flickr
Moody’s credit rating agency warns that “fears of a bubble in education spending are not without merit.”
Their new report uses entirely U.S. figures, but considering that the average amount of student loans owed by university students in Canada is similar to the amount owed by U.S. students upon graduation, ($27,000 versus $23,000), Canadians may worry too.
Moody’s argues that student loan lenders didn’t tighten their rules during the recession, unlike lenders in all other sectors. In fact, the growth rate in the total amount loaned to students continued to grow by 10 per cent per year. That’s despite the fact that the number of delinquent loans continues to grow too, while job prospects remain low. How will students be able to pay back all that money if they can’t find work?
Website hooks students up with “sugar daddies”
“Arrangements” help women pay off student loans: founder
Photo courtesy of Photocology on Flickr
A dating website offers young women — who it calls Sugar Babies — the opportunity to meet up with wealthy older men —- a.k.a. Sugar Daddies.
SeekingArrangement.com is especially popular with students who have school debt, Brandon Wade, the site’s founder told WCBV Boston.
“Out of brutal honesty, [users of the website] form mutually beneficial relationships,” Wade explained, adding that it’s not a prostiution site.
But on the homepage, young women are told to sign up if they “seek a generous Benefactor to pamper, mentor and take care of you — perhaps to help you financially?” And older men (and women) are told they might find, “someone special to spoil… perhaps a secret lover? student?…”
Continue reading Website hooks students up with “sugar daddies”
