OUSA

OUSA is back on the road again, on our way to Queen’s after a full day at Western, including a town hall on OSAP, a presentation to the University Student’s Council, and meetings with administration, campus media and some esteemed OUSA alumni. Since I’m sitting alone in the back of the car as punishment for being slightly late this morning, it is a great opportunity to read the study released today by the Labour Statistics Division of Statistics Canada highlighting new figures for student employment while they are studying.

The report finds that 45% of post-secondary students worked during the 2009-10 academic year, slightly down for the pre-recession level of 48% in 2007-08. The average employed student worked 15.6 hours a week for total earnings of $6,300. While it is encouraging that the job market seems to be rebounding somewhat and that students who need work have had their average earnings edge back up to pre-recession levels, it is still a worrying trend that students are increasingly having to rely on working through the school year to finance their education. The Statistics Canada study shows that employment has risen from 27% in 1976 and 35% in 1986 to the high of 48% in 2007.

Tuition and compulsory ancillary fees in Ontario averaged above $7,000 for the first time this year, and the TD Bank estimates the average Ontario student living away from home needs over $21,000 to complete one year of undergraduate education. Contrast these costs to the results of the 2009 Canadian Student Survey which found that Ontario university students earned an average of just $3,000 in the summer and were able to save only $1,200. The same survey found that 58 per cent of students were concerned about having sufficient funds to complete their degree. So, it is unsurprising that almost half of students feel the need to seek employment through the academic year.

What’s concerning though is that students working in school has been found by the Canadian University Survey Consortium, the Youth in Transition Survey and Prairie Research Associates to have a negative impact on students’ grades and student retention past first year. This is not news to the thousands of students who have struggled to balance academic commitments of studying, assignments and readings with their part-time job.

The Ontario government should be commended for increasing the availability and value of loans and grants in recent years. However, student costs are increasing at an even faster rate, and attention must be paid to ensure that the financial barrier to persisting and succeeding in post-secondary education does not continue to increase.

- Sam Andrey, Director of Research & Policy Analysis

One of the Ontario government’s goals for the Reaching Higher Plan was to improve the overall quality of our post-secondary education system. Five years and billions of dollars later, students and government alike are concerned with the lack of results. The causes have been debated at length, but whether it was unexpected enrollment growth or unchecked cost inflation at our institutions that swallowed this funding, improving the learning environment and investing in student success continue to be important goals for the future.

A renewed emphasis on quality and student success is necessary for Ontario’s future economic prosperity. While participation rates in Ontario have climbed toward 70%, countries around the world are still catching up, especially in university enrollment, and as the Institute for Competitiveness and Prosperity has consistently articulated, Ontario cannot compete with the world based solely on volume of graduates. With universities in India and China turning out hundreds of thousands of graduates, Ontario must have the best and brightest workforce, not simply hand out the most credentials.

And so we turn to the future, and to the question of how we can enhance the learning environment at our universities given Ontario’s poor fiscal situation. Some suggest the greatest priority is to lower student-faculty ratios, but, while this ratio is an important indicator, the quality of the learning environment cannot be reduced to this one figure. Other options deserve to be explored as well. Given the attention this subject has received of late, I’d like to take this opportunity to clarify OUSA’s position on student-faculty ratios and, more broadly, the quality of teaching and learning at our universities.

Reducing the ratio of students to faculty generally allows for two things: greater student-faculty interaction and smaller class sizes. Increased interaction can have a significant positive impact on learning and is a desirable outcome for students. OUSA’s recent Ontario Student Survey showed a significant correlation between the availability and helpfulness of academic staff and students’ overall satisfaction with teaching quality. However, when asked what makes a high-quality teacher, students selected multiple issues related to teaching pedagogy above availability outside the classroom. It should also be noted that high student-faculty ratios are not the only things preventing greater interaction. An increased emphasis on research has led to reduced teaching loads and less time for each professor to spend with their students.

On the second benefit, smaller classes create an environment where instructors can more easily implement active learning strategies and build stronger connections with their students. That said, most students have seen firsthand that a large class with a great teacher can be much more engaging than a small class with a not-so-great teacher. Dr. Tony Chambers and his colleagues at OISE are currently investigating the link between small classes and learning outcomes, and thus far they have found no causal relationship. In a presentation to the Society of Teaching and Learning in Higher Education, Dr. Chambers concluded that small classes in and of themselves do not improve specific learning outcomes unless the instructor is proficient enough in teaching to take advantage of this environment.

To add some context, student-faculty ratios have increased steadily for the past 50 years. Our partners at OCUFA put the current ratio at 27-to-1, and estimate that over 7,000 additional faculty would need to be hired, for a total cost in the billions of dollars, to return to the ratio seen in 1990. In the end, hiring these professors would not directly address students’ concerns with the quality of instruction at our universities. Students support the goal of lowering student-faculty ratios, but it should be treated as one part of the broader discussion of teaching quality. Given the fiscal situation we face in Ontario, we must consider where limited new funding should go to have the greatest impact on teaching and learning.

OUSA has developed a plan to enhance the quality of teaching and learning by pushing for cultural change in the way we teach. We have known for decades that the lecture model is less effective than active and deep learning techniques, yet we have not changed our practices accordingly. To provide a catalyst for change, OUSA is asking the government to:

-Target new funds to support and expand Centres for Teaching and Learning at Ontario colleges and universities

-Require new instructors to complete a training module in teaching, learning and assessment

-Require all graduate and PhD students to be given formal instruction in teaching, learning and assessment

-Set a province-wide target for the percentage of college and university courses employing forms of active learning

-Fund chairs in teaching, similar to the provincially-funded research chairs already in existence

While lowering student-faculty ratios is a worthy long-term goal, students believe these changes could be implemented at a modest cost and would have a tremendous long-term impact on the quality of teaching and learning at our universities.

Meaghan Coker
OUSA President

Starting the week with a normal commute seemed a little odd today, but a reprieve from our road trip across Ontario visiting campuses has been more than welcome. After being on the road since September 17^th, we get 2 days in the office before heading out for another 3 campuses in 4 days, with the most daunting drive being the London-Kingston overnight.

Despite the slight fatigue, we’ve been very encouraged throughout our campus visits when talking to students, who’ve been eager to discuss policy, debate strategy, and engage in focus groups and town-hall meetings.

With tuition in Ontario at its all-time high, and classrooms larger than ever, students are more engaged with the issues than ever before, and have express their concerns with the affordability of post-secondary education, and how it affects access for those who are traditionally underrepresented. The quality of the classroom has also been a hot topic, with students most concerned with the quality of their professors, and the learning opportunities outside the traditional lecture setting.

OUSA’s Fall Educated Solutions Magazine is in the works, and quality and student success is the theme of this issue, fitting nicely into the new concerns coming from students. Keep an eye out for this come early November, but until then, we will see you on campus!

-Alvin Tedjo
Communications Director

OUSA’s odometer is increasing at a quick pace as our campus visit fortnight continues. Wednesday at Windsor was a great success, culminating in a presentation to the University of Windsor Students’ Alliance. Windsor’s done some great things to support their increasingly large international student population, and it was great to meet with the head of their international centre and discuss ways to increase support for these students before, during and after their degree. I also enjoyed the opportunity to reconnect with President Wildeman for a productive meeting on the long-term challenges facing the sector.

Five hundred kilometers later we found ourselves in Hamilton for the first of two days at McMaster. The McMaster Students Union’s OUSA Street Team was out in full force yesterday bringing information about OUSA to their peers and collecting feedback on the needs and ideas of undergraduates at Mac. The day was full of meetings with administrators, campus media and students, including representatives of the McMaster Association of Part-time Students.

Today the rest of the OUSA Steering Committee and many of their outreach and research volunteers have joined us in Hamilton for a comprehensive training day. I’d like to thanks the McMaster Students Union for being such great hosts over the past few days.

Alexi White
Executive Director

Travelling from Brock to Windsor is long and arduous. We used the time to ponder a number of subjects, including the recent improvement to the Ontario Opportunities Program, which was welcome news to undergraduates. Last week the government announced (LINK)  that international students graduating from Master’s programs will be able to apply for permanent residency without a job offer, a feature of the program previously only available to PhD graduates.

The Ontario Opportunities Program nominates temporary foreign workers and international students for permanent resident status in Canada, thus dramatically reducing the time and complexity of the process. Students without a job offer must demonstrate proficiency in one official language and sufficient funds to cover their costs until they gain employment.

This move will support the Ontario government’s plan to increase the number of international students by 50% by making it easier for international students to stay here after graduation. It will also help Ontario retain bright minds from around the world. To make the most of this tool, however, the government should extend this same advantage to international undergraduate students. They outnumber international Master’s and PhD students by more than 3 to 1 and would be much more likely to study in Ontario if they too could speed up the permanent residency process.

The Premier has made it a top priority to have an educated workforce prepared for the knowledge economy. Already, 30 per cent of the province’s supply of human capital comes from immigrants and migrants to Ontario, and 51 per cent of immigrants who arrived between 2001 and 2006 had a university degree. What better way to meet the Province’s target of 70 per cent post-secondary attainment than ensuring that more Ontario-trained undergraduates stay in the province after graduation?

In addition, the government should take another look at the administrative cost of the program, which currently ranges from $1500 to $2000 regardless of if the candidate is successful or not. It would help if this “processing fee” was reduced to a reasonable rate so that all students would have an opportunity to apply. Furthermore, there are currently only 1000 positions available in 2010 for the program, while there are over 17,000 undergraduate students and 5,000 graduate students studying at Ontario universities. If we are to dramatically increase the number of international students on our campuses, we should ensure that the number of spaces in the Ontario Opportunities Program is sufficient to meet the demand.

The Ontario government has set ambitious goals for internationalization of our post-secondary institutions, which will help both the institutions and the Province. Helping to make sure international graduate students are able to stay in the province after graduation was an important step to meet this objective, but undergraduate students should not be left behind.

-Sam Andrey
Director of Research & Policy Analysis

It’s a beautiful fall day at Brock University and all around are the sounds of learning and construction. OUSA volunteers are handing out information on financial assistance and collecting feedback and ideas from their fellow students.

This is stop number three for the OUSA team as we complete our annual campus visit tour. Sunday and Monday were spent at the University of Waterloo and included productive meetings with Acting President Hamdullahpur, the Federation of Students’ Council, and campus media. And to top it all off we celebrated Alvin’s birthday.

It’s time do some volunteer training and meet with the Director of Institutional Planning and Analysis. Looking forward to our presentation to the Brock University Students’ Union this evening and then a long drive to the University of Windsor!

-Alexi White

Over the next two weeks, OUSA home office will be blogging from the road as we complete our annual campus visit tour. Festivities kicked off today with a trip to Laurier for some good old fashioned Golden Hawks hospitality. The day included meetings with editors from the campus newspaper, Laurier administrators, and the Board of Directors of the Wilfrid Laurier University Students’ Union. It was a great start to what will be a whirlwind trip to gather vital input and feedback from our members. See you on the road.

Alexi White
Executive Director

Representatives of the Ontario Undergraduate Student Alliance (OUSA) will be available for comment today, September 16, after Statistics Canada releases university tuition fee averages for the 2010-11 academic year.

Students expect the data will confirm that Ontario undergraduate tuition fees remain the highest in Canada, increasing by 5% over last year to an estimated record-high of $6,200.

Students appreciate the Ontario government’s ongoing investments in student financial assistance for those unable to afford these fees; however, students from high-income backgrounds are still more than twice as likely to attend university as students from low-income backgrounds. Furthermore, this gap has been increasing since 2002, according to the Higher Education Quality Council of Ontario.

As advocates for an accessible post-secondary education system in Ontario, OUSA looks forward to working with the government to improve the affordability of higher education and to develop a holistic access and outreach strategy for students from underrepresented groups.

Since the Ontario government established Multi-Year Accountability Agreements (MYAAs), the quality of the learning environment has always been included as one of many indicators. Unfortunately, the section on quality continues to be vague, without identifying any specific priorities under this immense umbrella term.

The latest MYAA Report Back, set to be submitted by each institution by the end of the month, contains only one line under the “Quality of the Learning Environment” section: “Please provide information in the space provided below of what Institution Name did in 2009-10 to enhance the quality of the learning environment and what strategies are in place to continue and enhance quality.”

Surely the quality of the learning environment is an important and complex enough issue to deserve a little more emphasis within the MYAAs. OUSA suggests that the next round of MYAAs replace this single question with a more robust set of strategic goals, including:

1. The National Survey of Student Engagement (NSSE) is commonly used to identify aspects of the student experience that can be improved. The following describes an agreed upon plan for improving NSSE scores in selected areas through the 2013-14 academic year.

2. The quality of teaching, learning, and assessment has perhaps the largest direct impact on a student’s academic experience. The following describes an agreed upon plan for improving the quality of instruction and pedagogy through the 2013-14 academic year.

3. The learning environment outside the classroom is a critical aspect of a student’s educational experience. The following describes an agreed upon plan for enhancing this broader learning environment through the 2013-14 academic year.

4. The assistance provided through student support services has a direct impact on students’ experience and their chance of persisting through to graduation. The following describes an agreed upon plan for enhancing student support services through the 2013-14 academic year.

5. The Ontario government has identified improving graduation rates, especially for students from underrepresented groups, as a long-term objective. The following describes an agreed upon plan for improving graduation rates through the 2013-14 academic year.

In a previous blog we noted the lack of student input in the MYAA process. Perhaps if students were actively involved, the quality of learning environment would get the attention it deserves.

-Alexi White
Executive Director

Results from Statistics Canada’s Labour Force Survey released on Friday provide sobering news as students in Ontario return to school this week. The unemployment rate for Ontario students who planned to return to school in the fall was 17.5%. While a small improvement over last summer, when unemployment was the highest on record at 19.3%, the results are worse than any other Canadian province and are still higher than the summer of 2008. Overall, the employment rate was 50.6% in Ontario, and the Canadian results show that the average number of hours worked was 23.6 hours per week.

The Ontario Student Assistance Program (OSAP) expects all students to work a minimum of 30 hours at the minimum wage of $10.25 and expects those living at home to contribute $2,957 of their earnings to their education. Considering the results of the Labour Force Survey, which found just over half of students working and the average student working less than the expected 30 hours, it seems many students will be struggling to meet their OSAP obligations and having trouble making ends meet. The Canada Millennium Scholarship Foundation has previously found that students whose financial aid package was not adequate to cover their actual costs of studying or who accumulate high levels of debt were less likely to complete their studies. While recognizing the significant improvements the Ontario government has made in the availability of student financial assistance, we urge the government to continue to invest in improvements and ensure that all Ontario students have an opportunity to pursue higher education.