All Posts Tagged With: "graduate studies"
On second thought, we don’t want you
U of T retracts acceptance email sent to dozens of graduate school hopefuls
Wow, is this ever embarrassing. The University of Toronto School of Graduate studies mistakenly sent emails to dozens of students telling them they were accepted into the speech pathology program, when they were, in fact, rejected. Some 169 applicants received the erroneous email last Friday.
As the Sun reports:
“Welcome to the University of Toronto,” read the subject line. “Acceptance into Canada’s preeminent grad school is an achievement in itself,” the e-mail said. “We chose you because you’re at the top of our list. And we believe you applied to U of T because we’re at the top of yours!”
That message caused at least one student to be predictably elated. “I was walking on clouds,” Meara Brown, who is a University of Victoria student, told the Sun. “I told my references, my peers, my profs, my friends, and my family. My family started telling everyone in the small town I grew up in.”
Brown’s educational ego boost was burst just three days later, when the U of T sent a clarification email:
“On April 9 you received an e-mail from the School of Graduate Studies suggesting that you should have received an offer of admission from the University of Toronto,” the April 12 e-mail said.
“The e-mail was sent to you as a result of an administrative error. We sincerely regret the confusion this has caused.”
The U of T blames the mistake on a line of coding in the original mass email that was intended for the 45 students who were actually accepted into the program.
A not dissimilar debacle happened at the University of Ottawa last spring when the law school misplaced 600 applicants. To rectify the mistake, UOttawa admitted extra students, and at least they blamed it on “human error” and not on those dreadful computers as the U of T has done. I guess that is just the way things are done at “Canada’s preeminent grad school.”
Dollar for dollar, a B.A. is better
Grad studies are on the rise, but the payoff in cash is small
More Canadians are pursuing graduate studies than ever before. Even prior to the recession—university enrolments tend to spike during economic downturns—a significant shift was already under way: according to Statistics Canada, 32 per cent more people had master’s degrees in 2006 than in 2001, and 30 per cent more had doctorates. But, as a recent study by the C.D. Howe Institute shows, going to grad school doesn’t always pay.
While the desire to pad the mind, rather than the wallet, is what motivates many of those who get advanced degrees, it may still come as a surprise that a simple bachelor’s is a far more fruitful economic investment. According to “Extra Earning Power: The Financial Returns to University Education in Canada,” throughout their careers, men can expect an average annual return (after taxes) of 12 per cent on what they paid for tuition, books and living expenses in undergrad; for women, who have less lucrative opportunities with just a high school diploma, it’s 14 per cent. For master’s degrees, meanwhile, the annual rate of return drops to 2.9 per cent for men, and five per cent for women. The payback is smaller still for Ph.D.s: women can anticipate a 3.6 per cent return, while men actually emerge in the red.
As author François Vaillancourt explains, though grad school often unlocks added earning potential, due to “very high” costs of tuition, living expenses and income lost, master’s degrees and Ph.D.s don’t necessarily translate into bigger bank accounts. For society, the costs are even more significant. When men get master’s degrees, government, taxpayers and universities actually take a financial hit. But despite negligible and, in some cases, negative value to society, Vaillancourt points out that there’s more to determining worth than dollars and cents. “One thing we cannot measure is the content of work,” he says. However, in the case of degrees for which taxpayers, in the big scheme of things, seem to be carrying the load, he suggests, “Perhaps society should ask itself, ‘Why?’ ”
Grad applications spike at Wilfrid Laurier
Grim job market persuades students to go back to school, applications up 19 percent
The Record is reporting that applications for graduate study at Wilfrid Laurier University are up nearly 19 percent from last year.
The rise is being attributed to a grim job market, which means graduating students are opting to go back for more school rather than be unemployed.
According to Joan Norris, the university’s dean of graduate studies, although the Feb. 1 deadline is still weeks away, they are already seeing a big increase in applications. They had 926 applications as of Thursday, up from 779 on the same day in 2008.
Applications to University of Toronto graduate programs are up by nine per cent, and applications for the MBA program at Queen’s University are double what they were last year.
Laurentian students told to pay up
Students rejected from full-time studies owe school $38,000
Three students at Laurentian University will pay $38,000 to the school after losing an appeal in Ontario court. The students complained that they were unfairly barred from graduate studies in biology.
Bryce Mulligan, Mathew Hunter and Hsai-Pai Patrick Wu were rejected from grad studies because the school said that they didn’t meet the funding requirement that mandates each student to earn at least a $15,000 stipend in order that they “do not suffer from financial duress” during their studies.
Related: Carson Jerema’s comments on the Laurentian situation
The students raised money, but not through the proper methods. They filed a complaint and originally lost in a unanimous decision of the Ontario Superior Court last August.
The school did offer the students entrance into a part-time program, which they accepted. But PhD student Linda St. Pierre, who is working with the three students, told the Sudbury Star that she is a bit confused by the university’s actions because full-time students have more financial-aid options than part-timers.
“I don’t get how they logically explain why part time is OK and full time isn’t,” she said. “We have the e-mail from the chair saying it’s to make sure students can live comfortably. They are actually suffering more in the part-time status than they would under full-time status.”
Mulligan, Hunter and Wu were also three of 24 students who filed a $30-million lawsuit against Laurentian and 18 other individuals in 2006 after students and their professor, Michael Persinger, were banned from an animal-care facility on campus. 16 of those individuals have since been cleared of wrongdoing, and three of the student plaintiffs have withdrawn from the case.
Laurentian released a statement that hoped for a speedy conclusion to all legal proceedings between students and the school.
“The university hopes the Court of Appeal’s recent decision, as well as two other court decisions in favour of the university, will encourage the students to now consensually bring an end to all legal proceedings initiated by current and former students in the Behavioural Neuroscience program,” said Dr. Harley d’Entremont, vice-president academic francophone affairs and director of academic-staff relations.
