OUSA

Educated Solutions article by Mitchell & Schultz

Republished from Educated Solutions: The Student Success Issue (Issue 7, November 2010)

By Bruce Mitchell & Faye Schultz

Over TEN years ago, the Center for Academic Integrity1, with 360 institutional members in 2010, argued that high standards for academic integrity create a foundation to promote scientific progress and prepare students for responsible citizenship.  However, the Center expressed concern that many postsecondary institutions “neither defined academic integrity nor expressly committed to it.”  It further noted that some emphasized listing prohibited behaviours rather than promoting appropriate values, such as honesty, trust, fairness, respect, and responsibility.

Students often receive conflicting signals related to integrity: business leaders charged with tax evasion or Ponzi schemes; political leaders involved in corruption; and highly paid professional athletes using performance-enhancing drugs. As a result, students can allow themselves to be persuaded it is acceptable to ‘cut corners’ to gain an advantage.2

Insight about academic integrity issues has been provided by Christensen Hughes and McCabe3 who reported on a survey of students and faculty at ten Canadian universities. Almost one in five undergraduates self reported about engaging in serious test cheating behaviour at least once; 45 per cent believed another student had cheated during a test or exam in the past year; and, 53 per cent self reported about their  serious cheating on written work one or more times.  The most common misbehaviours included working with others when asked for individual work, getting questions or answers from someone who had already written a test, copying material from another source, including the Internet, without attribution, and fabricating or falsifying laboratory data.

Responses from instructors indicated that 75 per cent of faculty and 80 per cent of teaching assistants were suspicious of students cheating on exams, almost half were certain cheating had occurred, and, more worrisomely, 46 per cent of faculty and 38 per cent of teaching assistants had ignored cheating incidents. Regarding the latter, reasons given were lack of sufficient evidence, perceived lack of support from administration, lack of time to follow up suspected cases, or incidents being trivial.

Christensen Hughes and McCabe4 indicated that different variables affect student behaviour in this regard.  While older, married and financially independent students are less likely to cheat, academic misconduct increases when students’ interest in a course is low, the quality of the instructor is poor, assessment systems emphasize grades over learning, and risk of detection is perceived to be low.

What should a student expect to find at a postsecondary institution committed to academic integrity?  The Center for Academic Integrity5 identifies the following:

• Clear academic integrity statements, policies and procedures implemented consistently.

• Information and education for the entire community related to academic integrity policies and procedures.

• Promotion and application of such policies and procedures, with support to those following and upholding them.

• A clear and fair system for adjudicating suspected policy violations.

• Programs to promote academic integrity among all groups on a campus, with emphasis on explaining the importance of integrity.

• Monitoring trends in higher education and technology that affect academic integrity.

• Regularly assessing policies and procedures to ensure continuous improvement and rejuvenation.

The above points highlight important considerations with implications for student success. First, academic integrity is not a ‘student problem.’6  Faculty and the institution need to be engaged. Second, information and education should be the starting point.  Universities must help students understand expectations about academic integrity through a mix of online or live tutorials, workshops and tip sheets, combined with clear explanations from instructors about expectations for specific courses. Finally, each institution must monitor to detect students deliberately choosing to cheat, and be prepared to impose sanctions.

In doing the above, the institution sends a clear signal: students wanting to do the right thing, the right way, will not disadvantage themselves.

Bruce Mitchell has been Associate Provost, Academic and Student Affairs at the University of Waterloo since 2003, and is responsible for the Office of Academic Integrity.  A faculty member at Waterloo since 1969, he was Associate Vice President Academic from 1998 to 2003.  He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada.

References:

1. Center for Academic Integrity (1999), The Fundamental Values of Academic Integrity, Durham, NC, Duke University, Center for Academic Integrity, October.

2. Canadian Council on Learning (2010), Liars, Fraudsters and Cheats: Dealing with the Growth of Academic Dishonesty. http://www.ccl-cca.ca/CCL/Newsroom/Releases/20100706AcademicDishonesty.html

  Hammer, K., (2010) “Computer-savvy students cheating more, getting caught less”, Globe and Mail, July 8th, http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/computer-savvy-students-cheating-more-getting-caught-less/article1632307/

3. Christensen Hughes, J.M., and D.L. McCabe (2006), “Academic misconduct within higher education in Canada”, Canadian Journal of Higher Education, 36(2): 1-21.

4. Ibid.

5. Centre for Academic Integrity (1999).

6. Academic Integrity Committee (2007), Toward a Level Playing Field: Enhancing Academic Integrity at the University of Waterloo, Waterloo, University of Waterloo, July 31st.

Educated Solutions article by Sylvie Albert

Republished from Educated Solutions: The Student Success Issue (Issue 7, November 2010)

By Sylvie Albert

STUDENT RETENTION (and its inverse, attrition) continues to increase in complexity and implications, and as a result, universities need to become more strategic in responding. Much like client retention is important to business because it reduces the cost of attraction, student attrition is viewed as even more critical because it represents a potential cost to both educational institutions and to society. The perceived impact has fuelled a protectionist attitude toward retention initiatives, even in a tighter budget environment, and promoted an increasingly larger menu of strategies. Yet student retention is not fully within the control of educational institution; it never was and may be increasingly less so. Retention may have become an art rather than a science, and if we want to be efficient, we will need to take a closer look at the needs of our various student populations and at the strategies that we choose to facilitate retention.

With our universities now serving a greater and more diverse portion of society, there is increased pressure to understand the many factors impacting retention and to design new strategies around the changing needs of our students. If we are to better target our retention efforts to those who would most benefit, we must involve students and other stakeholders in these discussions. Universities do currently invest heavily in those areas thought to have an impact on student academic success: preparation, transition programming, first year experience programming, and academic advising that identifies students-at-risk and intervenes to help them. Universities also invest in the provision of integrated services, curricular and co-curricular, to benefit the whole student.

But despite all we know about the diversity of reasons students have for dropping out, retention remains a summational index, one that attempts to respond in a very general way to the overall quality of the student experience and the world of possibilities offered up to students in a variety of ways. Many other factors in students’ lives affect retention, such as the prevalence of dysfunctional and disruptive behaviours, financial and familial stressors, the attraction of full-time work, counselling received prior to enrolment, and so forth. In other words, part of the attrition rate may be unlikely to move significantly with the introduction of targeted ameliorations. It would take generations to be addressed in a significant way with a need to involve stakeholders outside the university to make a real difference. Indeed, most retention efforts ignore the diversity that characterizes attrition causality and aggregate the data in ways that may mask the complex challenges to retention. We are working within an environment of generational differences, as well as younger students, more international students, a larger proportion of older students, and different entry points for students (such as those coming from colleges). These changes require a rethinking of how we will deliver the retention agenda.

Beyond the ‘what’ we do to minimize attrition, we should also consider ‘why’ we need retention strategies and think about our expectations in this regard. Our efforts may be better spent identifying where the line is that separates good student-success initiatives from academically-unpalatable “retention at all costs” strategies and determining how we will know if a university crosses that line. We should consider what success truly means and think about the fact that pausing or dropping out altogether may be in the best interest of the student and perhaps even of society.

In addition, we live in an environment where growth is an important government agenda and, thus,  retention as a key performance indicator may be counterproductive. Growth objectives are correlated to attrition in that universities which openly welcome students are negatively affected by government performance indicators pegged to retention. In other words, if universities are evaluated based on retention, then they will try harder to decrease attrition. This may sound good, but for some universities, it means only accepting students with high grades because they are more likely to persist or limiting transfer credits from one institution to another. If we want more open access then we will likely get more attrition and therefore, we have to be careful on what we expect from institutions.

We may even need to consider a structural attrition rate that cannot or perhaps should not be reduced through social-academic “engineering”. Similar to structural unemployment that sets aside a percentage of the unemployment figure to account for those in movement between jobs and not likely to find a job, it would capture a normal or expected rate of attribution and only those above the floor would have to be concerned. It opens the door to more discussion around how we measure attrition or retention. As noted by Dr. Richard Dominic Wiggers of the Higher Education Quality Council of Ontario (HEQCO) in a presentation to the Council of Ontario Universities Academic Colleagues in February 2010, “a student who leaves a particular postsecondary education program or institution is not necessarily a loss to the post-secondary education system as a whole, and may well go on to continue and complete a post-secondary education program elsewhere”. Our statistics are not capturing this type of student mobility and an institution should not be penalised for high attrition rates when a student decides to move to another institution or to take a break from their studies.  It may be time to invest in an Ontario retention evaluation system that would track students over time, as was done by the recent efforts of the Maritime post-secondary education institutions. It would allow Ontario universities to better assess students who return, entering programs in colleges, and moving across institutions. The introduction of Postsecondary Student Information Systems and the Ontario Education Number will facilitate this tracking process.

In summary, this article proposed several changes to the retention agenda: 1) to design retention strategies around the changing needs of students which means not only involving students themselves in the planning process, but also other community stakeholders that are likely to have an impact; 2) to remove provincial evaluation mechanisms on retention that penalize universities for having an open access system and place expectations on persistence that may not be in the best interest of the student and perhaps even of society; and 3) to develop a more comprehensive tracking system that would shed more light on attrition and allow for an improved evaluation of student success.

Sylvie Albert is the co-chair of the Academic Colleagues at the Council of Ontario Universities, the Director of the Management Development Centre at Laurentian University, and teaches Strategy within its Faculty of Management.

Educated Solutions article by Patrick Deane

Republished from Educated Solutions: The Student Success Issue (Issue 7, November 2010)

By McMaster University President, Patrick Deane

The recent OUSA survey, “What Students Want,” confirms that students in Ontario place a high premium on the quality of teaching and of professorial engagement in the province’s universities. This is hardly surprising: after all, the decision to pursue higher education necessitates considerable sacrifice on the part of most students and their families, and who would not care that the sacrifice be worthwhile? Who would not want the commitment to three or four years of study to be fruitful and to end in success? And who would not accept that the quality of the learning experience—and hence the quality of “teaching,” broadly construed—is fundamental to students’ success?

It is not uncommon for professors to lament that their students display what is essentially a travesty of this reasonable position, an expectation that the sacrifices they have made “buy” students the right to certain things: the time and full attention of their professors, then credit for the course and eventually a degree. It is certainly possible that recent increases in tuition fees have fostered a consumerist attitude in some students, but I doubt this is an altogether new phenomenon.  Nor do I think the prevalence of such attitudes is as widespread as is sometimes asserted. That students are making demands of their professors and of the universities at large is a sign not of declining values amongst the young, but of students’ desire to make their educational experiences count, to be successful.

Success cannot be achieved before it is defined. For one student, academic success might mean simply the completion of a course of study prescribed by a professional body for those who wish to join its ranks. For another, it might mean a general broadening and deepening of the intellectual horizon, something that might be realized through a wide range of possible courses and programs, and without reference to specific professional requirements. If these are very different conceptions of success, they are nevertheless not incompatible. There is no reason why the intellectual horizons of a medical or engineering student should not be broadened by their studies, notwithstanding the relatively strict way in which their program options are constrained. Similarly, there has been plenty of evidence adduced in recent years that a course of study in the liberal arts and science can be excellent preparation for success in specialized professional fields.

It is important that we not define student success ideologically, which is to say we should not assume the self-evident desirability either of securing a professional credential, or of not securing one. Obviously, if a student wishes to become a physician, simply receiving the approved credential is one measure of success. But if it matters what kind of a physician the student will be, or how effectively that individual’s practice of medicine will sustain health and wellness in his or her community, or how becoming a physician will shape that person’s life, we will need different, more profound definitions and measures of success.

In Ontario’s universities, the quality assurance regime is now sharply, and rightly, focused on outcomes. A framework of University Undergraduate Degree-Level Expectations (or UUDLES, as they are called) is a key point of reference for all undergraduate program reviews, and institutions have committed themselves to aligning programs of study more rigorously to desired outcomes than has hitherto been the case. The potential for student success in any particular course of study is now seen as inextricably linked to the success of the course itself, to the effectiveness with which each element is oriented to a well-conceived and clearly-articulated end.

All of this means that students are absolutely correct to be concerned about the quality of the educational experience. To hold their universities and individual professors accountable for the value of that experience is an expression not of their base consumerism, but of their recognition that in the learning process the stakes are profound.  On campuses across the province, students are organizing town hall meetings and panel discussions on the quality of teaching, and this is all to be applauded.

It is important, however, that the terms of those discussions not be too narrow. The OUSA survey asked respondents to identify factors that were “most important in determining whether a professor is a quality teacher,” and there is much to be learned from the replies received. But if we focus exclusively on the person of the teacher in any educational encounter, we will have what is at best only a partial accounting of the educational experience. Pedagogy needs to be understood as process, one in which an “instructor” may or may not have a prominent role, but the whole of which is to be assessed in relation to its outcome in terms of student learning. Discussions on this topic frequently assume that all learning experiences will be some sort of variant on the lecturer-auditor model, as in the high premium placed in the OUSA survey on “engaging presence in the classroom,” but there are of course radically different ways to structure the educational moment.

Half a century ago Thomas Kuhn, the American philosopher of science, noted that for the most part we only ever “discover” what our existing intellectual paradigms will permit us to discover, that there is in that sense rarely anything absolutely new. For that reason we need to test paradigms continually, and this is no less true of pedagogy than of physics. While I celebrate and support students’ engagement with the quality of teaching, I encourage them to go much further: to work with their professors and other university leaders to reconsider the goals and processes of undergraduate learning. In such a dialogue I would find the most profound confirmation of student success.

Patrick Deane was installed as President and Vice-Chancellor of McMaster University in July of this year. He previously spent five years as Vice-Principal Academic at Queen’s University. Dr. Deane, a native of South Africa and a scholar of English Literature, came to Canada in 1978 to pursue an MA and PhD from the University of Western Ontario. He and his wife Sheila raise sheep and horses in their spare time, and have a son and daughter currently in university.

Educated Solutions article by Jim Robeson

Republished from Educated Solutions: The Student Success Issue (Issue 7, November 2010)

By Jim Robeson

Educational achievement among a populace is a principal ingredient for promoting social stability and progress. Higher education does not just lead to higher earnings for the graduate. Those with a higher education also tend to enjoy better health, lower crime rates, and enhanced community involvement. Promoting learning among our populace promotes social progress, albeit in some indirect ways.

As we have come to see, the job opportunities available to those without a post-secondary education are fewer and much farther between than those with post-secondary. As the workplace has become increasingly complicated with the emergence of specialized technology, employers have demanded graduates with specialized skills. This has precipitated the need for more people to access education.

Ontario colleges of applied arts and technology, as well as institutes of technology and advanced learning, were established to support educational accessibility. Decision-makers opted to create colleges in the 1960s in anticipation of the need for highly skilled workers in greater numbers. Colleges and universities have both contributed significantly to the value and number of skilled workers in Ontario. However, Ontario’s post-secondary system remains incomplete, potentially preventing many students from achieving success.

Credit transfer—the transition and recognition of prior learning from one program to another—is crucial to the concept of student success. Ontario students’ capacity for reaching their full learning potential is not supported by the current  patchwork of bilateral agreements for the transfer of select courses between particular institutions. Students are often forced to retake nearly identical courses, often with the same textbooks. It is not uncommon for there to be a cap on transfer credits, even for elective courses, and for students to lose entire semesters or years when switching between institutions. Delays in credit transfer and a lack of transparency in the decision-making process are frequent criticisms. Finally, bridging programs or prior learning assessments are few and far between.

Both transparent program learning objectives and prior learning assessment are central to credit transfer. Institutions must understand how to translate credentials foreign to their institution. Requesting any student to duplicate observable prior learning is ineffective; it delays entry into the workforce and deters the students from continuing their studies. Duplication of prior learning is also more costly. If a credit transfer system could adequately assess prior learning, then students and government alike would save considerable amounts in operating funding and financial assistance money. For example, a 2010 Centre for Spatial Economics study identified that if 65% of a student’s transferable credits are accepted, the student can save at least $26,000. With cost being a significant deterrent to continuing one’s learning in Ontario, many college graduates are continuing studies elsewhere. These potential contributors to Ontario’s human capital may never return to the province.

The accessibility of education is compromised by the current lack of credit transfer, and Ontario cannot afford to have talented individuals leaving the province. Roughly 30% of college students in Ontario have a desire to complete undergraduate or graduate studies following the completion of a college diploma. Colleges Ontario’s report, Student Mobility Between Ontario’s Colleges and Universities, indicated that unfortunately, only 7% of college graduates end up actually enrolling in a university program.

However, we can turn to a few examples in Ontario for inspiration. Ryerson University and York University have been steadfast leaders in the practice of credit transfer. Both Ryerson and York accepted an average of 59% of the credits earned in a college diploma program. However, what is still troublesome is that these two institutions account for a disproportionate amount of credit transfer—well over one-third the Ontario total.

The market indicates that college-to-university demands for education are increasing. Students and government alike are recognizing that credit transfer is important for the future of Ontario’s post-secondary system. It is up to the entire system to seize this opportunity to create a new chapter in Ontario’s post-secondary education system. Without credit transfer, students and the government will continue to incur unnecessary costs and risk losing our current and future talent to other jurisdictions.

This decade marks a perfect time to fulfill the call for change and improvement to credit transfer programs. As Ontario looks to produce a greater share of the world’s innovation, attract more of the best talent, and welcome more of the world’s business, we must ask ourselves: how many of the best and brightest will choose to go to an Ontario university? Some of tomorrow’s best leaders will be those with both a college and university experience.

According to the Centre for Spatial Economics, over the next decade, Ontario universities will see an 84% increase in the number of students that register after graduating from an Ontario college with the implementation of a credit transfer system. As the post-secondary landscape changes, it is crucial that credit transfer remains at the forefront of an effort to enhance the marketability of our graduates and our global economic competitiveness, but to also reach the standard of quality that we consider student success.

Jim Robeson attended St. Lawrence College in Kingston, receiving an Advanced Diploma in Business Administration—Marketing and was class of 2008 valedictorian. During his studies, Robeson served as President of the student association, governor of the college’s board, regional director of the College Student Alliance (CSA) Board of Directors and later as the CSA Vice-President. With a continued devotion to, and belief in, the value of a college education, Robeson became Director of Advocacy at the CSA in May of this year.

Educated Solutions article by the Academic Transformation authors

Republished from Educated Solutions: The Student Success Issue (Issue 7, November 2010)

By Ian Clark, Greg Moran, Michael Skolnik, and David Trick (Authors of Academic Transformation)

In recent years, the public and the government have had a growing expectation that universities will produce knowledge that will enhance Canada’s economic well-being and international economic competitiveness. At the same time, the number of students seeking access to baccalaureate programs has skyrocketed. Enrolments have grown by over 100,000 in the past decade, and an additional 60,000-100,000 more students will want to attend university in the decade to come. Funding increases have not been sufficient to cover inflation and appoint the additional full-time faculty that would be necessary to keep pace with these demands.

The pressure on full-time faculty to do more research and to teach more students threatens to become unsustainable. Meanwhile, students’ needs are becoming more diverse: more students are entering university who require extra academic support in order to succeed.

We believe a compelling case can be made for expanding the number of faculty positions devoted primarily to teaching and making them part of the tenure stream. Faculty in these positions would predominantly be teachers, with a portion of time provided for keeping up-to-date in their discipline and for research that will improve teaching and learning.

Such a move would depart from the current model in which almost all full-time faculty are expected to devote 40 per cent of their effort to teaching, 40 per cent to research, and 20 per cent to service. In this model, a typical full-time faculty member teaches four one-semester courses per year.

The large increase in part-time instructors in recent years shows that this teacher-researcher model is in retreat. Instructors not engaged in discovery research have grown from being a relative rarity in the 1960s to being responsible for half or more of all undergraduate teaching in some of the largest university faculties today.

While greater resources—from government, student tuition, or both—are indeed needed, there is no reason to think they will be adequate to fund normal university inflation, increased research activity, and future enrolment growth based exclusively on the teacher-researcher model. As Ontario moves to a near-universal system of higher education, we need to plan for a system where the majority of undergraduate teaching will be conducted by faculty who are not substantially engaged in their own original research. Most of this instruction should be done by full-time members of faculty rather than those appointed on a course-by-course, part-time basis.

While it is widely claimed that faculty who are engaged in research are in a better position to be effective teachers, a recent survey of the literature on this question funded by the Higher Education Quality Council of Ontario highlighted several studies showing that there was no correlation (positive or negative) between faculty research and teaching effectiveness. Another comprehensive survey examined 58 studies on this topic and found the correlation between good teaching and good research was zero. The authors concluded that “the common belief that research and teaching are inextricably entwined is an enduring myth.”

Current practice in Ontario is that most teaching-oriented instructors are part-time. This means they are generally less available for duties that require a presence on campus and foster student success, such as meetings with students, professional development, program curriculum development, and departmental meetings. To the extent that they do not hold permanent appointments, they are not required or expected to participate in the self-government of the university. The burdens and privileges of self-government fall almost entirely on full-time permanent faculty. Lacking security of employment or other protections, part-time and temporary faculty are increasingly likely to adopt an industrial model of labour relations.

There are many Ph.D. holders who have an overriding love and commitment to undergraduate education, and who would gladly concentrate their academic effort on teaching if such stable, respected, full-time positions were available. Although these individuals would make excellent teachers of undergraduates, many of them are now working outside the university or as itinerant part-time instructors.

Others who do work full-time in universities currently devote time to research that could be spent more productively in teaching. One of the consequences of forced research is a torrent of pedestrian publishing that very few people read. If, instead, gifted teachers could spend more time teaching and gifted researchers could spend more time on research, the effectiveness of both teaching and research would be increased.

Many Ontario universities have formally established teaching-oriented full-time instructor posts in recent years with appropriate professional and career development policies and practises. Eight of the thirteen Ontario universities who responded to our survey on this subject confirmed that they have full-time teaching-oriented positions. The number of such positions at each university ranges from fewer than ten to more than 300. Teaching-oriented faculty typically have course loads of about eight one-term courses per year. The number of such positions is in some institutions tightly controlled by collective agreements. An analysis by the Ontario Confederation of University Faculty Associations reached similar conclusions. In only three of the universities cited in the OCUFA study are the full-time teaching positions in the tenure-stream, and they are confined to specific program areas, such as languages, and limited in number.

We hasten to add that we do not suggest the compartmentalization of the full-time professoriate into two separate camps, but rather that universities should move incrementally to foster more variation among faculty. Given current and anticipated levels of participation in undergraduate education, the proliferation and acceptance of such predominantly teaching full-time appointments would complement the typical teacher-researcher role to the benefit of members of faculty, students, the university, and the society at large.

Three related further points must be made. First, it would be both unrealistic and undesirable to imagine that part-time contract positions would be eliminated entirely. Such instructors often provide outstanding instruction in subject areas where sufficient numbers of full-time faculty are unavailable. In addition, these same appointments provide welcome experience and funding for some senior graduate students.

Second, it is important that universities more fully acknowledge and embrace the central role that part-time contract faculty play in the fulfillment of their teaching and, indirectly, their research mission. Such a change would involve an increased level of engagement of part-time instructors in the academic life of the institution, the provision of adequate resources to support their teaching, and the application of high standards for appointment and performance evaluation of their teaching.

Finally, although the model suggested here has many substantial advantages, it is undeniably likely to involve increased net costs relative to the current heavy reliance on course-by-course instructors. Our argument is that the ever-growing reliance on part-time faculty is not sustainable and does not best serve the interests of undergraduate students. It seems increasingly likely that the contingent workforce will become regularized, with greater security of employment and salary levels that reduce the current financial benefit to the university of hiring part-time instructors. There is a substantial public interest in ensuring that this transition takes place without lengthy disruptions in students’ education, and without moving to a universal teacher-researcher model that is financially unsupportable in a near-universal system of higher education.

It is time to adopt an approach that is capable of delivering an undergraduate education of high quality within the reasonable limits of funding available from the individual student and a government faced with the challenges of supporting a post-secondary educational system that is quickly approaching universal participation.

Ian D. Clark, Greg Moran, Michael L. Skolnik, and David Trick are the authors of Academic Transformation: The Forces Reshaping Higher Education in Ontario (Montreal and Kingston: Queen’s Policy Studies Series, McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2009).

Fmr. Premier Bob Rae's Foreword in Educated Solutions

Republished from Educated Solutions: The Student Success Issue (Issue 7, November 2010)

By Former Premier Bob Rae

I am constantly meeting people whose lives have been transformed by education, and I often tell the story of my own dad, who received a two hundred dollar scholarship to go to University of Toronto in 1932 and whose whole life was changed as a result.

What is clear today is that only a consistent public policy that puts Ontario in a position of real leadership will ensure both opportunity and excellence for our people.

When Premier McGuinty asked me to undertake a review of Ontario’s higher education system, I found that we were beginning to pay the price for complacency. There are pockets of real strength in the system, but more focus and more investment remain necessary.

The challenge is just as strong today – Ontario has stopped falling behind, but there is, once again, a risk that a period of financial retrenchment will lead to short-term decisions that will hurt the system and hurt the necessary goals of opportunity and excellence.

My report found that we still don’t have a coordinated college/university system, that we were not making the necessary investments in graduate education, and that financial barriers are still blocking the way for too many potential students. We’ve made some progress in dealing with these challenges, but much remains to be done. It may well be that the Higher Education Quality Council of Ontario, created by the McGuinty government in response to one of my recommendations, needs to be given a clear legislative mandate to ensure more progress in all these areas.

New studies confirm the sense that decisions about higher education are actually made early on in life. Since we know more and more jobs will require higher education, it makes sense to start raising expectations and ambitions sooner, especially if we understand that apprenticeship and training are an integral part of the higher education stream.

Is it realistic to think that new investments can be made in a time of financial restraint? At the very least, the McGuinty government has to respond to the continuing crisis in student aid and increasing costs as higher unemployment puts more financial pressure on working families.

The simple fact is that as recovery comes, which it will, Ontario’s higher education system will make it possible for the province to do even better. If we make the mistake of cutting back, the entire provincial economy will be poorer.

It’s important that Ontario’s students remain at the forefront of the public debate. OUSA has always done an outstanding job in this regard, and has in many ways led the argument for a continued focus on investment in higher education. Avoiding ideological excess every step of the way, OUSA has commissioned research, documented the failures of public policy, and pointed the way to a better approach.

The report that I wrote was not the “last word” on the subject. It was in fact the beginning of a public discussion that fortunately found resonance in the Premier’s office, the legislature, and ultimately several provincial budgets.

We are now at a critical point. We need to expand enrolment in technical, undergraduate, and graduate education; create a seamless transition for students from college to university; encourage savings by parents and students alike; place a renewed focus on student success; and ensure that the link between higher education and the innovative economy is made even stronger.

This can be done and is especially important in a period of profound economic change. I congratulate OUSA on keeping the debate alive, focused, and looking for solutions rather than rhetoric.

-Bob Rae

The Honourable Bob Rae is the former Premier of Ontario, author of Ontario: A Leader in Learning—a comprehensive review of post-secondary education in Ontario, and current Member of Parliament for Toronto Centre.

The OUSA home office team is on the road to St. Catharines for the semi-annual General Assembly, hosted by the Brock University Students’ Union.

Sixty delegates from across Ontario are now on their way to Brock, for what promises to be a weekend of intelligent and thoughtful debate and discussion about the future of higher education in Ontario.

Following Minister Milloy’s visit at our General Assembly last year, today’s opening session features visits from the official critics of both opposition parties. Saturday will feature policy working groups on a variety of topics, and Sunday’s plenary will consist of reports, presentation of the audit, and the passing of official OUSA policy.

OUSA prides itself on the transparency of its activities and meetings. To follow all the activity this weekend, check out OUSA’s twitter hash tag #ousaga for regular updates.

This weekend’s student democracy in action will not be one to miss.

-Alvin Tedjo
OUSA Communications Director

In preparation for the upcoming release of OUSA’s comprehensive strategy to improve the accessibility of Ontario’s higher education system, OUSA has been conducting focus groups with students on our constituent campuses. Over the past few days I’ve been visiting member campuses and hearing from students that identify with groups that are underrepresented in post-secondary education, including low-income, Aboriginal, first generation and rural students.

On Wednesday, I had the opportunity to meet with a group of first generation students at Brock University. First generation students are students whose parents did not attend a post-secondary institution. All of these students felt a great deal of pride in being the first in their immediate families to attend university, but also had many concerns about the accessibility of post-secondary education. Some of the main issues we talked about were the lack of information available to students at the high school level about financial aid, the need for more awareness about first generation programs available on campus, and informational barriers to post-secondary education.

This morning, I found myself back at McMaster University, this time meeting with students who identified as being from low-income households. An hour of very animated and enthusiastic discussion touched on many different issues. Some students felt isolated in the university environment, where many of their peers were not from low-income backgrounds, and couldn’t relate to their financial struggles. There was widespread frustration with how complicated and confusing the OSAP system is, as well as concerns about leaving post-secondary education with heavy debt loads. Students were also worried about being penalized for working during the school year, by having some of their OSAP allowance clawed back, and expressed frustration that this prevented them from gaining valuable work experience in their fields.

Meeting directly with underrepresented students has been an extremely valuable experience. It enables OUSA to make sure that our research and advocacy is connected with student needs, and gives us insight into how students’ personal experiences relate to the literature on post-secondary education. I’m very much looking forward to continuing this process as we move forward with the access strategy.

-Laura Pin
OUSA Research Analyst

On Monday, the Ontario government formally introduced the Repayment Assistance Plan (RAP) for Ontario student loans, following up on its initial announcement in March. The implementation of RAP at the provincial level was a key recommendation of the Ontario Undergraduate Student Alliance last year, and students are encouraged that the Ontario government has fulfilled this important commitment.

Student loans in Ontario are repaid like a mortgage, where standard minimum monthly payments are established and made regularly until the loan is fully repaid with interest. When students graduate, the National Student Loan Service Centre sets up a monthly repayment schedule where the maximum length of time a student can take to repay their loans (the amortization period) is 10 years.

Under the former loan repayment program, students could receive interest relief for a fixed number of six month periods, but after a student had exhausted their interest relief months, it was difficult to qualify for debt reduction programs, and these programs offered limited assistance.

The implementation of RAP makes several key improvements to the student loan repayment system in Ontario. If a student applies for RAP, the program calculates a student’s ‘affordable payment’ based on their gross income. If the student’s expected monthly OSAP payment is greater than their ‘affordable payment’, their payments are reduced by the government to the calculated affordable amount. The ‘affordable payment’ begins at 0% of the student’s total income (for a family size of 1 person, this is an income of less than $20,210), with incremental increases until a maximum percentage of 20% (at $59,210 for a family size of 1).

RAP works in two stages. During the first five years after graduation, any affordable payment is applied to the outstanding loan principal first, and then to the interest. Any interest which remains unpaid is automatically paid by the government, and any principal which remains unpaid is automatically rolled over to the next month at no penalty. After the initial five years have passed, the loan is re-amortized over a further ten-year period. Once the affordable payment is applied, any amount that is remaining, whether it is principal or interest, is automatically paid by the government. This ensures that, no matter the size of the outstanding loan, or the size of the affordable payment, all outstanding loans will be eliminated or paid off within 15 years.

The Repayment Assistance Plan for Borrowers with a Permanent Disability (RAP-PD) is even more generous for students. Loan payments take into account uninsured medical expenses, special care and other expenses related to the disability, and the repayment period is shortened to 10 years.

Students still have a few recommendations for improvements to the program, including basing eligibility on after-tax income rather than gross income, assessing recipients of employment insurance a payment of zero dollars, instituting a more seamless application process, and making it easier for students who have defaulted on their loans to be eligible for RAP.

That said, students are appreciative of the ongoing and progressive payment relief, the assurance that no eligible borrower will have debt after 15 years, and that all students currently in repayment are eligible for immediate relief. OUSA congratulates the government on the program, which is a significant step forward for students repaying their loans.

-Chris Rudnicki
AMS VP University Affairs

Earlier last month, OUSA made their annual presentation to the McMaster Students Union’s legislative body: the Student Representative Assembly (SRA). During this presentation it was mentioned that Waterloo recently dealt with an issue regarding students having to pay for additional online learning tools in order to complete their courses. This is a violation of the Ancillary Fee Protocol. According to this agreement an ancillary fee is one in which “a student is required to pay in order to enroll in, or successfully complete, any course credit.”

One of the assembly members contacted me regarding a similar issue students were facing at McMaster. Many students, particularly in the School of Business, are required to purchase an online learning tool in order to complete a course. This tool is used to complete tests and submit assignments, and each student must pay upwards of $65 for it. In addition, the learning tool expires and is not transferable to any other course.

In response, I put out a call to students to speak about using this online learning tool, and all of the answers have been the same. They were required to purchase is, it was not useful beyond the course and it expired after the class was completed. According to my interpretation of the Ancillary Fee Protocol, this programs stands in clear violation of the agreement. I have been working with our Associate Vice President Academic to resolve the issue, and have provided him with as much information as possible. Since this has become an issue, students have approached me with other online learning tools that act in much the same manner, and I will be looking into those as will. I will be sure to keep you all updated.

-Joe Finkle
MSU VP Education
OUSA VP Administration