Ascending and Descending into the System: A Comparison of Broadcasting Media Programs In Ontario Colleges.

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. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]