Quebec is bracing for social unrest after talks with the government to settle the tuition fee strike broke down and student organizations vowed massive demonstrations in response to the collapse.
Four days of negotiations ended in an impasse on Thursday when Premier Jean Charest’s government refused to budge on its plan to increase tuition fees. It was likely the last chance for an immediate resolution to the social crisis that has gripped the province for almost four months.
Mr. Charest appealed for calm.
“We made important efforts. And we now see that we are at an impasse. So what happens now? We hope that in the coming weeks it will be a period of calm,” Mr. Charest said, ruling out calling a snap election to settle the conflict. “Ultimately, there will be an election some time over the next 18 months. And it will be in a democratic context for us to express ourselves on these issues.”
A resolution had seemed possible at the outset of the talks, but after examining several proposals, both sides refused to yield. The government insisted on moving ahead with university tuition fee hikes while the students were adamant in their demand for a freeze or moratorium.
The government also refused to suspend provisions in a law adopted two weeks ago that constrains public demonstrations. … Read more.
Hundreds of students who nearly didn’t complete high school are being fitted for graduation caps and gowns thanks to a simple solution: reaching out and talking to them.
Each school year, thousands of Canadian students quit school between September and June. They miss a few assignments, stop coming to class and don’t register for classes for the next fall. Last school year at the Toronto District School Board, there were 1,667 Grade 11 and 12 students who met this description.
Boosting graduation rates is a priority across Canada. The Canadian Council on Learning estimates that high-school dropouts cost taxpayers $1.3-billion in social assistance and criminal justice expenses each year.
Canada’s largest school board has come up with a new approach to bringing students back to the fold. Starting in mid-August last year, a team of four retired teachers and guidance counsellors worked the phones for two weeks, dialled every phone number they could find and refused to settle for answering machines or voice-mail.
They reached all but 15 students and convinced 864 to come back. Nearly 300 will graduate by the end of June, and hundreds more are back on track towards achieving their high-school diplomas.
“We were reaching out and saying basically, ‘We miss you, come back,’” said Christopher Usih, the TDSB’s superintendent of student success, who led the project. “We’re quite pleased with the result.” … Read more.
As the summer employment season begins across the country, a new report from BMO Bank of Montreal provides good news for students with a post-secondary education, as well as other Canadians who are working to upgrade their education and skills.
The report, released today, reveals:
“Competitiveness, the growing knowledge-based economy and demographic shifts are changing not just the types of jobs being created across the country, but also the skills and educational requirements businesses are looking for in applicants,” said Cathy Pin, Vice-President, Commercial Banking, BMO Bank of Montreal. “In fact, many of Canada’s most successful and fastest-growing small and medium-sized companies are innovation-focused and depend on their employees’ skills and knowledge both to develop new products and services and improve their productivity.”
Desired Educational Background
The survey results are consistent with data from Statistics Canada which show a growing demand in the labour market for individuals who hold some form of post-secondary education or training, compared to those who do not. In Canada, from 1990 to 2010, the annual number of jobs filled by post-secondary graduates more than doubled from 1.9 million to 4.4 million, while during the same period job opportunities for Canadians who held a high school diploma (or less) declined by almost 1.3 million.
In the new BMO report, just one third (32 per cent) of businesses surveyed indicated that they will be looking to hire applicants with no post-secondary education or training. … Read more.
The University of Calgary has ranked 17th on a Top 50 under 50 list of universities around the world.
The Quacquarelli Symonds, or QS, Top 50 Under 50 is a new list that ranks universities that have been established since 1962. By ranking the world’s youngest universities, the list excludes older institutions with more established reputations that tend to dominate university rankings.
Elizabeth Cannon, president and vice-chancellor of the University of Calgary, said she is pleased to see how the school ranked.
“As a young university, we’ve come a long way in a short time,” said Cannon. “We’re in great company with young universities, and I think it provides us a real boost in terms of meeting our strategic goals.”
Among the three Canadian institutions that made the list, the University of Calgary ranked the highest on the list. Vancouver’s Simon Fraser University ranked 25th, and the University of Victoria ranked 34th.
The Chinese University of Hong Kong ranked best overall on the Top 50 Under 50.
Australian universities dominated the list with 10 of the 50 spots, with schools in Hong Kong claiming five spots, three of which are in the top 10.
While the list helps to raise the university’s profile, Cannon said rankings are only one factor students look at when choosing a university. Other influences include types of programs offered, location, and opportunities for jobs after graduation, she said.
“Are (rankings) front and centre in terms of a decision? I think they may play a small part, but I think students do a lot more in-depth investigation when they actually go to select a university,” she said.
The schools are ranked based on six indicators: academic reputation, employer reputation, faculty and student ratio, citations per faculty, international students and international faculty. … Read more.
Several hundred people, including many students, in Regina and Saskatoon took to the streets to bang pots and pans in show of support for students in Quebec, who have been protesting increases in the cost of post-secondary education.
Casserole rallies — or cacerolazos — originated in Latin American countries as a form of popular protest where people bang pots and pans. The Saskatchewan rallies were among several organized in cities across Canada.
The Regina rally marched along 13th Avenue. In Saskatoon, people marched along Broadway Avenue and gathered at Rotary Park.
“The problems that are being faced by Quebec students are the problems that are being faced by students across the country,” James Ford, a rally organizer in Saskatoon, told CBC News Wednesday night. “Tuition is just too high.” … Read more.
The University of Arkansas is formulating policies that would allow transgender students to use restrooms that match their gender identity. Although UAFS recently made gender-neutral restrooms available on campus to accommodate transgender community members, it had to rethink its approach after Jennifer Braly, a junior, complained to the civil rights division of the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ), which sent a letter to the university’s lawyers. While the college would not make the letter publicly available, DOJ spokesperson Xochitl Hinojosa said UAFS was not directed to take any specific action.
R. Mark Horn, vice chancellor for university relations, said the institution is doing its best to meet the needs of transgender students and had considered gender-neutral restrooms the most viable solution. “We did what we thought was reasonable accommodation,” Horn said. “We were trying to be fair on both sides to students who are not transgendered (sic) as well as to this student.”
Braly explained that she had been using both women’s and gender-neutral restrooms and encountered no problems until she started lecturing about being transgender at the invitation of several psychology professors. Soon thereafter, at least one student complained about having to share facilities with trans people. UAFS administrators requested that Braly limit herself to gender-neutral restrooms but she countered that there were no such facilities in the buildings she frequented. The university then placed Braly in a single dorm room for the coming fall semester instead of with roommates, which finally spurred her to contact the Justice Department.
Shane Windemeyer, executive director of Campus Pride, said that “it sounds like the campus has not done a good job taking responsibility for creating a welcoming, safe space for trans-identified students. It is unrealistic to ask anyone to go across campus in between classes to be able to use the restroom.” … Read more.
As several Canadian universities declare that they will not be signing a new licence agreement with Access Copyright, the copyright collective has announced that it has agreed to a similar model licence with the organization representing Canada’s community colleges.
Access Copyright, which collects copyright fees on behalf of writers and publishers, announced on May 29 that it has agreed on a model licence with the Association of Community Colleges of Canada. Under the model licence, ACCC institutions will pay Access Copyright a royalty of $10.00 per full-time equivalent student annually to copy any material covered by Access Copyright.
A similar agreement between Access Copyright and the Association of Universities and Colleges of Canada – representing Canada’s degree-granting institutions – was announced on April 16. That agreement will see universities pay an annual royalty fee of $26 per FTE. Explaining the difference in fees, Maureen Cavan, executive director of Access Copyright, said historical course-pack usage data indicates that universities copy 2.6 times more than colleges.
Several universities have recently announced that they will not sign the model licence, the latest being York University. According to a statement posted on the university’s website, York has been operating outside of the Access Copyright tariff since Sept. 1, 2011 and will continue to do so. Copies “will continue to be made under licences obtained directly from publishers, third-party vendors, content from our library subscriptions, open-access content, fair dealing or educational exceptions in the Copyright Act,” said the statement. There are financial incentives for universities to sign the model licence by June 30, 2012. … Read more.
If a proposed new program passes at Senate, select students could proceed to medical school at Queen’s after only two years of undergraduate education.
The proposal for the accelerated program was approved by Arts and Science Faculty Board on May 4.
The program is the brainchild of Dr. Richard Reznick, dean of Health Sciences and director of the Queen’s School of Medicine.
“One of our strategic priorities in the School of Medicine is to explore innovative models of medical education,” Reznick told the Journal via email.
The proposal must pass through Senate before it can become official.
The next Senate meeting will be held on Sept. 25.
Under the proposal, 10 gifted high school students will be selected to take part in the Accelerated Pathway to Medical School at Queen’s each year. The program, which is slated to begin in 2013, will enable them to complete the degree requirements for a Doctor of Medicine, including undergraduate education, in six years, instead of the traditional eight.
“A review of the education of physicians in many other countries, including most of Europe and many parts of Asia suggested that a shorter time frame might be feasible,” Reznick said.
Queen’s will be the first university in Canada to implement such a program, Physiology professor Ken Rose said. Rose was responsible for proposing the motion at Faculty Board.
“I’m really enamored with the idea of being the first,” Rose said.
The program could also allow students to proceed to medical school without taking the Medical College Admission Test (MCAT.)
“Medical colleagues are becoming increasingly concerned about the closing of the socioeconomic gap of those taking the MCAT,” Rose said, adding that the test itself costs around $300 to 400, not including preparation courses. … Read more.
On the day when student leaders and the Quebec government reopened negotiations to try to break the deadlock over tuition fee hikes, police arrested close to 100 protesters and bystanders - including the negotiator for one of the student groups involved in the talks.
Philippe Lapointe, the negotiator for CLASSE, had just left the bargaining table at the end of Monday’s meeting in Quebec City to witness the arrests of protesters outside the building where the talks were being held. He was promptly taken away by riot police.
Léo Bureau-Blouin, the leader of another student group, tried to negotiate with police to stop the arrests and allow the protesters to disperse. But police ignored Mr. Bureau-Blouin, president of the federation of college students, and continued to round them up.
Mr. Bureau-Blouin feared the arrests could derail the fragile negotiations that are set to continue Tuesday.
Student leaders refused to comment on how negotiations with the government had fared so far.
At the outset of the talks on Monday, the college and university students demanded that the government re-examine its plans to hike tuition fees by more than 80 per cent over seven years beginning next September and lift provisions in the emergency legislation known as Bill 78, adopted ten days ago. … Read more.
Nearly a hundred members of Occupy Edmonton protested in Churchill Square Sunday, calling for solidarity for student protesters in Quebec.
“I’m hoping with the momentum and the energy in Quebec it will inspire people not just in Alberta but Canada-wide to stand up and fight for the values of socialism,” said David Laing, one of the organizers of the event.
“Education is a right. And we will not give up the fight.”
For more than a month, hundreds of thousands of students and supporters have taken to the streets in Montreal, protesting the provincial government’s plan to raise tuition.
Student leaders and provincial officials will resume talks Monday afternoon.
Many at the Edmonton rally say, while the massive protests are confined to Quebec, they’re bringing attention to the costs faced by post-secondary students closer to home. … Read more.
A new website is meant to keep Canadian scholars honest when it comes to research. The Little Office of Research Integrity posts news related to research misconduct and calls for action when it notices what it sees as problems with intellectual integrity.
Mort Shirkhanzadeh, the site’s founder and Associate Professor in Queen’s University’s Department of Mechanical and Materials Engineering, says that the site came out of the “gradual and painful realization that we don’t have a system in Canada to genuinely deal with research misconduct.”
Shirkhanzadeh says existing systems don’t adequately allow for correcting the scientific record when research misconduct takes place. He’s taken it on himself over the past seven years to report what he believes is misconduct to his university to the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council (NSERC), but now he’s taken his message to the wider community.
Ideally, Shirkhanzadeh says, there should be an official office to make these corrections. Part of the purpose of the web site is to show that more needs to be done. People need to realize, he says, “how bad things are and how desperate the situation is becoming.” … Read more.
Gay rights activists are demanding public funding be taken away from Moncton’s Crandall University.
The institution has a policy not to hire people in homosexual relationships, something two groups say is a violation of human rights.
Since 1996, the Christian university, formerly known as Atlantic Baptist University, has benefited from about $24 million in funding from all levels of government, despite the policy.
“If you’re going to use public money, it has to be used for the public,” says Josie Harding of River of Pride -the group that organizes the annual lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgendered (LGBT pride week.
“I think (funding) should be cut if they are indeed a public institution and want to enforce this. It’s against human rights law,” she says.
Moncton has actually increased funding in recent years, with council voting in 2010 to raise its annual $100,000 grant by a further $50,000.
Earlier this month, council passed a long-term grant policy that allows Crandall University to qualify for more funding, despite its anti-homosexual rules.
Councillor Daniel Bourgeois is against the policy, but thinks the school should still get the money.
“These are institution that draw to the city the best and brightest minds in the region,” Bourgeois says.
His opinion isn’t shared by the Canadian Association of University Teachers, which won’t even recognize it as a university because of the policy.
“If an institution calls itself a university and imposes an ideological test or a faith test as a condition of being able to be a professor there, we think it’s entirely inappropriate,” CAUT Executive Director James Turk, says. … Read more.
All those hours students spend playing on Facebook and other social gaming sites might actually be paying off – literally.
A new start-up purports to help students pay for tuition by awarding money to the winners of online games resembling Texas Hold ‘Em and Words With Friends – at no financial cost whatsoever to the student.
The co-founders, recent Ivy League graduates themselves, are certainly sympathetic to the plight of students
The pitch Makhael Naayem and co-founder’s Dimitri Sillam are making to students is simple: You’re going to be playing games online anyway, so why not earn some money toward tuition while doing it?
It might seem improbable, but since the site launched March 25, about 2,000 students have registered and 150 have won tuition grants totaling $20,000. (Here’s testimony from one University of Vermont student who won $2,000.)
A graduate of Columbia University’s engineering entrepreneurship program, Naayem demonstrates the altruistic mentality that some young entrepreneurs have today, said Chris McGarry, a major gifts officer at Columbia who helped connect Naayem to alumni who are “mentoring” the Grantoo co-founders (and who have told McGarry the recent graduates have the chops to be successful).
“Business schools generate ideas around things you can consume,” McGarry said. “Engineering students tend to create problem-solving types of ventures that really create a value, instead of just create money.”
Grantoo hosts daily tournaments with $100 payouts, and ones every Sunday with $2,000 payouts split between 10 or so winners; the bigger the payout, the more winners there are.
But with most of the payouts being relatively small after they’re divided among winners, and with only about 5 percent of registered players having won, is it really worth students investing their time in this? … Read more.
The Ontario Medical Students’ Association (OMSA) has been encouraged by the Ontario Government’s focus on increasing access to care for patients by training more medical students and increasing the supply of doctors in the province. Unfortunately, the government’s actions during the negotiating process and in particular their decision to unilaterally cut fees and services has medical students questioning whether Ontario is the place they want to practice when they graduate.
Medical students across the province are adding their voice by calling on the government to stop their unilateral cuts, and get back to the table and negotiate an agreement with the assistance of a third party conciliator.
Over 950 students were accepted to medical schools across the province and over 850 will graduate this year. Medical students, much like every other young professional starting their career, look for opportunities to develop their skills and utilize their training. The recent decision by the government to impose cuts is sending the wrong message. Students are now more seriously considering other jurisdictions that are giving their doctors greater respect for the role they play in the health care system.
In addition to looking for a good place to practice students must also consider how best to pay back their student debt. Ontario currently has the highest medical school tuition rates in the country at nearly $19,500 per year. As a result, students finishing medical school are saddled with sizable loans and carry an average debt load of $150,000.
Given their level of commitment and considerable investment in medical school, it’s important that the government create favorable working conditions for new graduates, so they may contribute to the health care system by providing the best possible care to patients. … Read more.
There are lots of people hoping a resolution can be reached in the tuition dispute as talks began in Quebec City on Monday.
But none more than Léo Bureau-Blouin.
Sure, Montreal businesses, bridge-users, festival-goers, rights activists and anyone sensitive to the noise of the clanging pots are eager for an agreement to end the strife. But Bureau-Blouin has a particular interest.
The president of the Fédération étudiante collégiale du Québec (FECQ) will end his two-year term on Thursday and hand over the reins in the midst of one of the largest - and most volatile - student mobilizations this province has ever seen.
Students have been striking for 106 days to protest tuition hikes, prompting emergency legislation to suspend the semester and establish controversial guidelines for protests. That contentious law, 78, has sparked a whole new debate about democracy and civil liberties, which has put student leaders at the centre of a movement that stretches way beyond the significance of paying an extra $254 a year in tuition.
So, yes, when Thursday rolls around, Bureau-Blouin would like to know that the crisis is over and that he has contributed to facilitating a resolution.
“I really want to wrap it up,” he said in an interview. “But it’s not just me - our whole organization wants to solve the conflict.”
In his place will be new president Éliane Laberge, an almost-20-year-old who studied history and civilization at the Collège de Rosemont, and who will be assuming the post at possibly the most tumultuous time in the FECQ’s history. … Read more.