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In 2013 the Ontario Ministry of Training, Colleges and Universities released Ontario's Differentiation Policy Framework for Postsecondary Education, for colleges and universities in the province. All 24 Ontario colleges responded to this Framework by presenting their Strategic Mandate Agreements (SMA). The Framework contrasts the original provincial mandate for the Ontario colleges, which was to provide accessible comprehensive institutions throughout the province. This paper examines, at a programmatic level, how this "Framework" affects Broadcasting Media programs in 13 out of the 24 colleges that offer this vocational discipline. The paper presents the vertical, inter-intra institutional, formal reputational hierarchy that exists amongst these programs. This paper argues that the Broadcasting Media programs are elite, differentiated, and diverse; their formal and informal hierarchical status creates deeper, intentional stratification, entrenching programs as positional goods with positional power competing for supremacy, regardless of the intent of the original mandate for the Ontario colleges. If the Strategic Mandate Agreements are executed by the Ontario Ministry of Training, Colleges and Universities, then this hierarchical, programmatic stratification will become further stratified and inaccessible. Although this paper focuses on one particular vocational discipline, the theoretical and research approaches have the potential to affect other programs within these comprehensive, community-based colleges.

Ontario's Colleges of Applied Arts and Technology (CAATs) have established productive links with employers and the result is practical training that leads to rewarding work for graduates. This practical success is not being adequately recognized in a crucial debate that focuses on strategies for economic development. It is important for the CAATs to promote a greater awareness of the links between their programs and broader goals such as economic prosperity. In this paper, the authors discuss the current orientation of government economic strategies and its potential for supporting the CAATs. They argue that there are three measures of economic performance that are central to the role that CAATs play: (1) return on investment in education; (2) productivity; and (3) skill shortages. Using these measures, the CAATs can make a strong case for their role in the economic strategies. The authors also discuss the context of decision-making, measurement issues and opportunities for the colleges as they raise their profile.

This paper provides a perspective on post-secondary education systems in the countries of the former USSR with the objective of building potential linkages for North American Colleges with the higher education institutions in Eastern Europe. (Contains 3 tables.)

Higher Education is in a time of immense change. Colleges and Universities are under greater pressure to demonstrate their value while experiencing increasing levels of economic constraints, changing accountability structures, and pressure to demonstrate excellence in teaching and learning/student outcomes. Technology, elearning and massification have fundamentally changed how faculty teach and interact with students. For administrators, defining and measuring teaching excellence in the new era will be progressively complex and elusive. The purpose of this paper is to examine higher education literature to explore frameworks/definitions and methods to define and measure teaching excellence and to investigate the usefulness of these performance measurement tools.

This paper identifies and examines major issues and implications of the proposal to substantially increase the number of applied baccalaureate degrees offered by Ontario's Colleges of Applied Arts and Technology, including increasing four-year applied degree offerings and introducing three-year applied degrees. Currently, provincial legislation limits the number of degree programs colleges may offer, along with the degree type and length. I argue that although substantially increasing degree offerings would meet important economic, labour market, and access needs, there are a number of issues and implications related to quality and recognition, differentiation and mandate, and access and demand that need to be explored and addressed in greater detail. These issues and implications will be identified and examined in light of the legislated function of colleges within Ontario's postsecondary system, recent college and student participation in these degree programs, and the demand for applied baccalaureate degrees in Ontario.

This paper considers the history of Québec's higher education system and the reforms that have contributed to the role of education in the province. Québec's education system has repeatedly been a site for social and political transformation; most recently, reevaluation of education's role in the province has revealed a tension between ideologically opposed conceptions of higher education as a private good or as a public service. The continuing debate about education has been especially fierce in Québec and raises questions of access, funding, quality, and educational philosophies applicable to contemporary education systems throughout Canada and across the globe.

This paper will examine college to university transfer in Ontario. In doing so it will discuss the structure of higher education in Ontario; present the benefits and challenges of college to university transfer; examine the current system of transfer; and explore several strategies for improving opportunities for college to university transfer. It will be argued that increasing opportunities for transfer is not only a matter of meeting increased demand but it is also a question of social justice and equality of access. Increasing college to university transfer opportunities provides an educational pipeline for underrepresented groups.

The corpus of existing curricular practices relating to the applied degree provides some opportunity to re-visit the Mission of Colleges of Applied Arts and Technology (CAATS) and transcend local and situated boundaries to consider the relatedness of what members of CAATS do well, what new activities they should be considering and how they face the challenges. The search for a comprehensive understanding of the applied degree has long eluded administrators, academics and policy makers. The inadequacy of any sustained analysis of the conditions and consequences of the applied degree is not due to the often attributed phlegmatic unwillingness of mainstream thinking to grapple with fundamental implications, financial or otherwise, but rather to a perniciously cemented resistance to any knowledge that challenges the privileged ethos of institutionalized hierarchies of power. Acknowledging the intellectual limits of orthodox thinking, a more critical analysis however seeks to make sense of the often ignored relationship between colleges and universities from various vantage points notably the pedagogy of praxis, dialectics of discipline and the primacy of partnerships. The author talks about the applied degree as the pedagogy of praxis, dialectics of discipline and the primacy of partnerships. The author offers some measures which suggest that Colleges would do well to work together in a host of different College and University partnerships according to aspects of the dominant ideologies that have been well buried in institutional practices. (Contains 3 figures.)

This paper describes the journey of a mid-size community college towards developing and institutionalizing a core set of values into the culture. The aim is to establish a common guidepost to integrate planning, decision-making and behaviour within the learning community of Red Deer College (RDC). Consultative process was used to engage staff and students in defining the values and a set of associated questions for each value. In order to encourage living the values, strategies were implemented to create strong branding, to establish the values as the organizing framework for key processes, and to facilitate conscious use of the values in daily activity. The values were linked to the college vision, mandate, mission, board goals, and leadership principles as an integral component of the "big picture" and of ongoing cultural change. Key determinants of success and key challenges are outlined as well as future directions.

Ontario's elementary and secondary school mathematics curriculum was implemented in Fall 2000 having been revised according to the key principles of the social-constructivist view of mathematics education. This change in pedagogy has implications for teaching and learning mathematics, the use of technology and the emphasis in problem-solving. In the search for understanding, this paper summarizes some of the key research which provided a substantial foundation to the secondary school curriculum. The implications the revised curriculum will have on educating incoming college students are identified with respect to these pedagogical changes and some recommendations for a college response are provided.