Top Ten
May 18, 2007
Bangladesh’s University Grants Commission has charged 56 private universities with operating illegally in the country. Each school has been asked not to give admission to any subject, course, department or faculty. 12,000 students at the affected institutions are worried about whether they will be allowed to finish their programs. Two Canadian institutions, Royal Roads University and Cambrian College, are apparently among those reported to have been operating without approval from the country’s UGC. The New Nation A $25 million expansion at York’s Osgoode Hall law school is set to be unveiled at a fundraising luncheon next Wednesday, with $19 million yet to be raised. The expanded building will be built around a new atrium, and will include common areas, student meeting rooms, faculty offices and a glass-ceilinged library. Dean Monahan says that with a recently-hired faculty, as well as a revamped admissions policy and curriculum, and now a new building, Osgoode will rank with the world’s best. The Toronto Star St. Lawrence College’s $70 million budget includes a $4.5 million deficit, the third deficit budget in the past five years, and it has been rejected by Ontario's education ministry. Auditors are currently reviewing the books to find costs ripe for cutting, in a "collaborative" and "advisory" capacity only. Staff and faculty at the school are concerned that the government’s recommendation will be to shut down either the Cornwall or Brockville satellite campuses. The Cornwall Standard Freeholder A project by the Canada Millennium Scholarship Foundation will focus on Ontario PSE students at high risk of dropping out. “Foundations for Success” is a $6.7 million undertaking funded by CMSF, with $500,000 from the provincial government. Confederation, Mohawk and Seneca Colleges are partnering on the project. CMSF News Release | Seneca News Release Success Solutions, a BC-based company, and Sprott-Shaw Community College have pioneered a home care training program in Shenyang, China. Part education, part immigration, the program’s graduates will find homes in British Columbia’s short-staffed personal care industry. According to the director of Vancouver Island’s largest home support provider, “the demand is huge, we have a lot of overtime, we’re going to job fairs and we still have about 30-40 hours of overtime a day.” Victoria News We've had a break from stories of town/gown clashes over off-campus student housing (partly because they've gone home for the summer). The City of Barrie thinks it may have found a solution: private developers are being encouraged to build student housing in the east end of the city, which would redirect traffic and noise away from family neighbourhoods. Only 10% of Georgian College students are housed on campus; the remaining 90% have been struggling to find welcoming neighbourhoods in the areas surrounding the campus. Simcoe.com Students of Humber College’s Spa Management program spend five days a week in class, and the other two working at the Humber Spa providing manicures, pedicures, waxing and facials for faculty and students. Many colleges with spa programs have started similar operations. Students are not paid for their hours in the spa, but those interviewed seem happy to be able to get practical experience in a comfortable environment, rather than hoping for a positive co-op experience. The Toronto Star TransLink, the Greater Vancouver transit authority, has been scouring online classifieds looking for students who are illegally selling their discount student transit passes. UBC and SFU students pay about $20 a month for unlimited use of transit. Students who are caught selling their pass face a $346 fine, as well as a non-academic misconduct citation on their transcript. Besides online snooping, TransLink plans to beef up security on one of the major UBC bus routes. The Peak (Student Newspaper) Maybe it’s a cost-saving strategy, or maybe it’s to promote student work, but either way, Air Canada will be screening student films on its flights this summer. The entries shown will reach more than 2.6 million viewers per month, and will also be eligible for prizes to be awarded by a celebrity panel of world-renowned film industry professionals. Entries are being accepted until July 31, and screenings begin in July. Air Canada News Release | EnRoute Student Film Festival website The newswires seem full of demands for increased funding -- to improve faculty/student ratios, update buildings, and expand capacity to produce more workers of tomorrow. The funding crunch is not limited to Canadian institutions, but rather is being seen on a worldwide scale as governments struggle with financial demands from their colleges and universities. When governments can’t deliver, students shoulder the burden with soaring tuition fees, and the US takes the prize for the world’s highest. US student loans payments are calculated by total loan size; an article in CNN recommends that the US could take a lesson from Canada’s public student loan system. CNN
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