October 30, 2006
Tomorrow, the
Globe & Mail will publish its annual
University Report Card magazine, grading universities from coast to coast on quality of education, knowledge of professors, class size, course variety, residences, sports facilities, faculty and staff interaction, library collections, and more. Nearly 33,000 students were asked to rate their schools. Full results will be available Tuesday at
www.globeandmail.com/reportcard .
On Friday, student advocates and opposition politicians objected to Nova Scotia's plan to cut university tuition fees -- but only for in-province students. NS tuitions, the highest in Canada at an average of $6,500, will be reduced by about $440 in January, and possibly more next September. NS plans to bring tuition in line with the rest of the country by 2010. Provincial NDP politicians highlighted the 500 NS students currently studying at Memorial University of Newfoundland -- where tuition is only about $2,600. Quebec, the only other province charging differential fees, averages $1,700 tuition for in-province students, and nearly $5,000 for others.
Maclean's The Canadian Federation of Students and the York Federation of Students issued a media release Friday objecting to Elections Toronto's plan to host a single polling station at York University, to service 80,000 campus voters. "It is unacceptable that Elections Toronto is pushing for a status quo that is disenfranchising youth voters by keeping the ballot box out of their reach."
CNW media releaseThe federal and Quebec governments announced last week a new college for Quebec's Aboriginal community, to open in September 2008. Manitou College, the only previous native PSE institution, closed in 1975. It had become the centre of native student activism. The new bilingual French/English college will likely be located on the Mohawk reserve of Kahnawake. Globe & Mail
Yesterday, a fleet of 18 tractor-trailer trucks was to descend on the campus of the University of Guelph, which is "starring" in a new television series that will air in Canada next fall. The exterior Guelph campus will be presented as a fictitious university. Film crews will be on campus several days a month until next spring. Revenues from location fees will be used to support student residence programs, address deferred campus maintenance, and upgrade parking lots.
Campus BulletinSaturday's
Globe & Mail reports a growing trend for teens and tweens to start drinking coffee as young as age 9 or 10, to help wake them up for school in the morning and stay up late doing homework. Coffee shops like Starbucks and Tim Horton's have replaced the diner, arcade, and mall for many teens. As many as 52% of teens aged 13 to 17 drink coffee, and consumption of caffeine energy drinks (like Coke's new coffee-infused "BlaK") is also on the rise. Experts warn of possible health risks, and a food scientist at the University of Guelph, thinks Canada may even have to look at a ban on selling coffee to children, who can wind up restless enough to meet the criteria for ADHD.
Globe & Mail article"Smart, competent and driven" UofT Rotman School of Management dean Roger Martin is profiled in a six-page feature in this month's
Report on Business magazine. Among other things, he complains about his experience as a business student at "anti-intellectual" Harvard, the tendency for business schools to turn out "narrow automatons," and intense competition with UWO's Ivey. Under his direction, the Rotman school has risen from 72nd to 24th place in the
Financial Times rankings, quadrupled its tuition and endowment -- and he promises to hit the FT top 10 in the next four years. The article says that Ivey's "cross-enterprise leadership" sounds like "a straight rip-off of integrative thinking," Rotman's own brand. A sidebar profiles Dezso Horvath, dean of York's Schulich School of Business -- which is currently ahead of Rotman at number 18 on the FT rankings.
ROB articleAt 12:30pm today, college and university students will participate in a mock funeral procession from the University of Toronto to nearby Queen's Park, the seat of the provincial government, to object to the McGuinty government's decision to end the tuition freeze in Ontario. Eulogies will be delivered outside Queen's Park, and then students will deliver petitions to Members of Provincial Parliament. Participants will be students from UofT, Ryerson, York, and George Brown College.
CNW media release
