Archive for Josh Dehaas
A tale of two colleges in Sudbury
English college questions French school’s funding
The president of Sudbury, Ontario’s English-language college wants the province to look into the funding disparity between her school and the city’s French college, which gets significantly more provincial funding per student. Cambrian, the English college, is cutting staff, while College Boréal is planning to give all new students iPads. “Cambrian doesn’t get enough funding to offer every student an iPad,” president Sylvia Barnard told CBC News. College Boréal president Denis Hubert-Dutrisac defended the disparity. The iPad money came from fundraising, he said. He also said it’s more expensive to run his college because of translation costs and its network of small campuses.
Eureka! Discovery learning works
3M Fellow Connie Varnhagen explains her approach
Connie Varnhagen, Alberta
University of Alberta psychology professor Connie Varnhagen doesn’t always know what students will learn when they enter her classes—and she likes it that way. She wants them to discover knowledge on their own.
Here’s a story that shows what she means. In one class, she instructed her students to come up with a test to identify which of her two cats has a worse case of cerebellar hypoplasia, a brain disorder that causes the poor felines to tumble over when they walk. While trying to come up with tests, the class observed that both cats are left-handed. That was news to Varnhagen. Exciting news. “Most cats are strongly right-handed,” she says. Could left-handedness be related to the disease? The students jumped into the research literature to find out.
The result? “They developed better critical thinking skills and scientific literacy because it was something they discovered all on their own,” says Varnhagen. One went on to veterinary school and studied even more about it.
Striking Quebec students reject gov’t offer
But compromise could be near
Photo by yanik_crepeau on Flickr
Student groups in Quebec were quick to reject Liberal Premier Jean Charest’s Friday offer of concessions. Still, there are new reasons to believe some of the groups opposed to the $1,625 tuition increase could be ready to compromise and end their ongoing “strike.”
On Friday, Premier Charest said he would spread the impending tuition increase over seven years instead of five, which would reduce the increase to $254 per year from $325. CLASSE, the province’s largest and most militant student group, said Saturday that it will not accept such a deal.
But FECQ and FEUQ, the other two large students groups, asked for mediation with the government. Education Minister Line Beauchamp said today that it’s too early for mediation—she wants students to vote on the offer made Friday first. Still, the fact that she didn’t entirely reject the idea of mediation seems to indicate progress.
Continue reading Striking Quebec students reject gov’t offer
Quebec premier offers strikers concessions
Jean Charest would reduce tuition hikes to $254 per year
Quebec Premier Jean Charest has offered concessions to student groups opposed to the tuition hike of $1,625 over five years, in hopes they’ll end their protests. Charest says he would spread the increase across seven years instead of five. That means fees would go up by $254 each year, instead of $325, although the hikes would continue until 2019 instead of 2017. The premier would also add $39 million in new bursaries, would link loan payments directly to income (as his government previously proposed) and would create a council to oversee the management of the province’s universities. The 10-week-old strike has put many students’ semesters in jeopardy and has spawned violent protests, including one on Wednesday at which 85 people were arrested.
Lakehead student reps can’t vote on tuition
Board chair cites conflict of interest rules
Are tuition hikes a “conflict of interest” for students who represent their peers? The chair of the Lakehead University Board of Governors certainly thinks so. A new bylaw requires the three student representatives to leave the room when changes to tuition are discussed and voted upon.
Michael Snoddon, president of the Lakehead University Student Union, thinks that the new bylaw—an apparent oddity among university boards—is unfair. “I think that this change in the conflict of interest bylaw silences students,” he told CBC News. He says LUSU may ask for a judicial review.
Colin Bruce, the chair of the board, said that the new conflict of interest bylaw covers all board members and was developed with legal advice. He said, “any solid reading of conflict of interest will tell you you cannot vote on something in which you have a financial interest.”
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A place just for men?
Simon Fraser students debate gender-exclusive spaces
Midgley (centre) Photo by Brian Howell
Keenan Midgley played basketball, soccer, baseball and football. But it isn’t his athletic skill that has made him well-known on campus in Burnaby, B.C. It’s the budget he’s written as treasurer of the Simon Fraser Student Society.
The fifth-year accounting student added funding that will carve out a special space on campus for guys. The men’s centre, assuming the budget passes a final vote, will get $30,000 next year. That’s the same amount that the women’s centre, started in 1974, will receive.
The pending creation of the men-only space is the source of much discussion at Simon Fraser University. Since the news broke in April, many students have questioned whether the men deserve funding. Along with that, a debate has emerged over whether women—who make up 55 per cent of undergraduate students at SFU—still need their own women-only space.
Newfoundland continues tuition freeze
Province increases university funding despite deficit
Photo of Memorial
Newfoundland and Labrador will soon take the crown as the cheapest place to study, despite a deficit budget that includes job cuts and that will cause provincial net debt to rise by $1-billion to $8.5-billion by March 2013.
Tuesday’s budget includes $44 million for Memorial University and College of the North Atlantic to prevent them from raising tuition fees, which averaged $2,649 in the fall of 2011.
The province will soon have the lowest fees in Canada. Nationwide, university fees averaged $5,366 in 2011, according to Statistics Canada.
85 arrested in Montreal
Tuition protest leads to violence, vandalism
Banks, shops, cars and a police station had their windows shattered in Montreal Wednesday night following a protest against university tuition hikes in Quebec. Police say that 85 people were arrested and that three police officers suffered injuries.
The scene was chaotic. Students lobbed paint balls. Police used pepper-spray.
Gabriel Nadeau-Dubois, head of the militant Quebec student group C.L.A.S.S.E., had warned earlier in the day that Quebec Education Minister Line Beauchamp’s refusal to meet with him was equivalent to “pouring oil on the fire,” reports Le Soleil.
Beauchamp had been willing to meet two other student groups, but refuses to speak with C.L.A.S.S.E. because they continue to advertise violent demonstrations online. C.L.A.S.S.E. responded by saying that their website is not centrally controlled.
Many student associations in Quebec have opted to boycott classes at various points over the past 73 days to protest the government’s planned tuition fee increase of $1,625 over five years.
McGill exams disrupted by fire alarm
Protesters not to blame: associate dean
Photo by Shermeee on Flickr
Two hours into his three-hour economics exam on Monday, third-year McGill University student Nico Ahn’s concentration was broken by a blaring fire alarm. He and hundreds of other students (there was another big exam happening in the same gymnasium) were told to leave their belongings and tests behind.
In the chilly morning air outside, Ahn says he and other students theorized about the alarm. Did someone realize she was going to fail, slip out and pull the trigger? Or was it an anti-tuition protester who wants all students to join Quebec’s boycott of classes—whether they like it or not?
The best-paying, most-hiring industries revealed
Why you should learn math and move to Alberta
Photo by lindsay.dee.bunny on Flickr
Want to know which industries are hiring Canadians? Better yet: want to know which industries are hiring and paying handsomely?
Look no further than the new Canadian Business report on Canada’s Best Jobs. It shows the 50 best occupations based on highest salaries, salary growth and recent upticks in employment.
The fastest-growing occupation—no surprise here—is petroleum engineering. The guys and gals who calculate how best to harvest bitumen from Alberta oil sands saw their numbers increase by 85 per cent between 2006 and 2011. They also took home fat pay-cheques: a median of $90,002.
Next on the list reflects the growth in health care spending (and attempts to rein it in). Nursing supervisors saw their numbers increase by 46 per cent while their pay grew 24 per cent to $74,880.
Continue reading The best-paying, most-hiring industries revealed
Street food not allowed
UBC official blames union
Photo by sprklg on Flickr
Vancouver has a burgeoning street food scene, but students from the University of British Columbia will still need to travel off campus to experience it, at least in the foreseeable future.
Andrew Parr, the University of British Columbia’s head of food services, told The Province newspaper that he’s skeptical about whether food trucks and carts will ever be allowed on campus. That’s because union that represents food workers, CUPE 116, is opposed.
After Vancouver’s famous Japadog carts showed up at UBC in November, the union filed a grievance and the carts are no longer allowed.
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Alberta to investigate suspiciously high marks
Certain private schools may be boosting grades
The Alberta government says it will investigate after the Calgary Herald found wide gaps between final grades awarded by certain high schools and their students’ pitiful exam performances.
The newspaper’s data show that, in most courses, marks tend to drop about 10 per cent after final exam scores, which are worth 50 per cent of the grade, are added to the 50 per cent awarded at the teacher’s discretion. But in some private schools, grades dropped a lot more after the tests.
For example, in one class at the International School of Excellence (ISE), grades fell by 38.9 per cent after an exam, which only two of 19 students managed to pass. Despite the poor exam results, everyone in the class was given their credit on the strength of high marks from their teacher.
An investigation in Ontario last year uncovered apparent “credit mills.” At these private schools, students said it was much easier to get high grades than at public schools they had attended.
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Firefighters warn Fredericton students
Burning couches is dangerous and costly
Firefighters in Fredericton, N.B. want students to consider the financial costs and potential dangers of burning couches after two were found alight near the city’s universities on Friday. The end-of-year tradition among students from St. Thomas University and the University of New Brunswick is something the city has fought for years—apparently without much success. There were 19 furniture fires in 2008. Captain David McKinley told CBC News that there have been seven already this year.
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Mandatory gym? Ctrl-Alt-Delete
Computing students fight back against forced exercise
Students Alex Geoffrey Lee and Marwan Marwan in the gym at BCIT. Photo by Simon Hayter.
“I try not to get too riled up about it,” says Chris Holisky, “but it’s hard.” Indeed, Holisky has plenty of time to stew during his hour-long commute to the British Columbia Institute of Technology on Thursday mornings. The first-year computer systems technology student is required to be inside the campus gym by 8:30 a.m. sharp. His weekly rush-hour jaunt is rewarded with a 50-minute free-for-all (there’s no actual instruction) and a signature on an attendance sheet. The 36-year-old says he’d rather spend the mornings helping his girlfriend get her kids to school. But if he doesn’t get those signatures, Holisky won’t graduate. “It’s insulting,” he says.
Where did the prof go?
The debate over whether to put more lectures online
Allison Torbiak by Marianne Helm
When Allison Torbiak sat down in her first-year psychology class at the University of Manitoba two Septembers ago, she was surprised to hear the woman at the front of the room announce that their Monday and Friday lectures would be replaced by online recordings of two professors talking over lecture slides. The class would meet only once per week, on Wednesdays, for a seminar led by this woman, a graduate student—and not a professor. While many of her almost 200 classmates seemed excited, Torbiak says she was disappointed. “I was looking forward to the big auditorium with lots of kids.” She wondered, “How will I stay motivated without a real live professor?”
Rich kids have problems too
Why parents shouldn’t pay the full tuition bill
Photo by Carsten Schertzer on Flickr
Some students seem to have it all. Their parents send them off to school in gently-used sports cars, they find money deposited in their bank accounts each term and they’re always up for a party because they never have to work part-time.
But a new study in Journal of Adult Development suggests that less wealthy college students shouldn’t envy the rich kids. It turns out rich kids feel more immature, have less defined career plans, and engage in riskier behaviours like drugs.
The conclusion? “Parents who are in position to help should provide a level of support that facilitates progress toward graduation while enabling children to become invested in their own education by contributing to the cost of getting a degree,” co-author Larry Nelson told the Salt Lake Tribune.
The study by researchers from Brigham Young University involved in-depth surveys of 402 undergraduates and their parents at four schools in Maryland, the U.S. Midwest and California.
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Quebec protesters block classes, exams
160 arrested in Gatineau
Photo by yanik_crepeau on Flickr
In Quebec, where many students have boycotted classes for months, attempts by universities to hold classes and exams are being severely tested.
More than 160 protesters were arrested on Wednesday at the Université du Québec en Outaouais’s Gatineau campus, after an injunction ordered protesters off campus for two weeks starting Monday. The adults among them were charged hundreds of dollars each for blocking the highway to campus, reports the Montreal Gazette.
Also on Wednesday, the province’s biggest school, the Université de Montréal, called off classes in departments whose student associations have held successful strike votes, despite having earlier encouraged willing students to return to classes this week. The capitulation followed incidents where protesters blocked students from entering and leaving buildings and set off fire alarms during exams, reports the Gazette.
Women’s educations impact families
But perhaps not the way you’d expect
Photo by Victor1558 on Flickr
By 1991, women surpassed men to make up the majority of graduating classes in Canada. By 2006, they earned roughly 60 per cent of degrees, reported Statistics Canada.
The shift inspired questions (hand wringing, really) about whether educated women will choose careers over marriage, leading to the smaller families and the end of civilization as we know it.
Well, women can now relax—depending on where they live. Taken together, two new studies suggest that education is related to marriage rates, but differently than you may currently believe.
Saudi universities ban emos
Subculture declared “improper and deviant”
Authorities in the socially conservative Kingdom of Saudi Arabia have banned university students from partaking in the “emo” subculture, according to Al Arabiya, which quotes an Al Riyadh newspaper story that says emos have been officially labelled “improper and deviant.” The term emo is short for emotional and adherents often wear skinny black jeans, pile on heavy make-up, sport androgynous hairstyles and gather to listen to weepy music. Saudi Arabia isn’t the first place to target them. The chief of police in Yerevan, Armenia said in 2010 that the presence of emos could “damage our gene pool.” Human rights activists likened the comments to a modern-day witch hunt.
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Police warn pot smokers
Drug laws will be enforced on 4/20
Photo by JosephAdams on Flickr
April 20 (or “4/20″) is an annual holy day for marijuana smokers. It’s also a day that’s conveniently close to the end of exams at many Canadian universities, making campuses a natural gathering spot for pot-fueled celebrations.
In many cases, police ignore the illegal substances—it’s not as though pot smoking is likely to lead to riots. But this year, police in one Canadian university town, London, Ont., are reminding people that possession of any quantity of marijuana is illegal. “The London Police Service will enforce the law on this date as they would throughout the year,” they said in a release.
