Thursday, March 25, 2010

Open Ontario: Will more students mean more education? (Blog: The Inside Agenda - By: Mike Miner)

Open Ontario: Will more students mean more education? (Blog: The Inside Agenda - By: Mike Miner): "

This post was written by the Agenda with Steve Paikin's intern, Ariel Garneau.



If you’ve been on an Ontario university campus in the last three years you know what life for a student is like. Buildings are falling apart, student services like health centers and student unions are in high demand and underfunded. Students need more space and they can’t build classrooms fast enough. Ontario Universities are in need of an infrastructure overhaul.



In the March 8th 2010 Speech From the Throne, Premier Dalton McGuinty unveiled his Open Ontario five-year plan. In his speech the Reaching Higher: the McGuinty Government Plan for Postsecondary Education, McGuinty promises to invest $6.2 billion more on post-secondary education and training between now and 2009-2010 and, this year alone, increase student numbers by 20,000. The plan raises several important questions, mainly are Ontario universities ready for an additional student load?



According a July 2009 report by the Council of Ontario Universities, “$9.4 billion in new construction was needed by 2012 to accommodate naturally increasing volume of students. Universities, however, were not in a financial position to sustain further borrowing to meet this level of construction.” The question is, will this increased funding allow universities to meet the expansion required for predicted student growth? Once the facilities are increased, will there be sufficient room to allow for the 20,000 undergraduate increase per year as Premier McGuinty wants? Surely current student needs should be met before worrying about exponentially increasing the student population. Back in 1996 the Ontario was thinking just that, what changed?



The next question is whether the current state of academics will be able to maintain the same high-quality results for its students after an increase in student body.



Some universities are undertaking “academic planning exercises” to re-shape their faculties, cut courses and stream line programs, and save money according to an issues driven Queen's University website. Most universities are scrambling to maintain service and meet a bottom line. What about China and India? The two countries have huge post-secondary systems, and are producing graduates and trades people proportionally at a greater rate than Ontario. However their degrees are not a guarantee of a quality education as because of the glut of students and the institutions' inability to meet basic staff requirements. But if Ontario Universities can meet infrastructure requirements for an extra 20,000 students a year, will the quality of education slip? Currently the University of Toronto is ranked the 29th best university in the world compared to McGill at 18th. U of T has a total of 69,054 full-time students across three campuses, and McGill has a grand total of 27,044 full time students (including graduate students). The difference in students is 2.5 times larger.



When investing in our post-secondary system to meet future economic demands, should the government of Ontario focus on increasing the number of graduates or the quality of graduates? If Ontario solely focuses on the number of students it can leave the ‘higher’ aspect of education to the rest of Canada. If Ontario chooses to focus solely on the number of students it can graduate, it risks lowering the bar on high education.



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Wednesday, March 24, 2010

Binder Clips as Cable Catchers Redux [Cable Management]

Binder Clips as Cable Catchers Redux [Cable Management]: "

Binder Clips as Cable Catchers ReduxWe've long been fans of using binder clips as cable managers, but sometimes, a person's raw enthusiasm for a technique makes it worth another look. Dutch freelancer David Rudolf Bakker photographs the whole process of desk-edge cable catching in beautiful detail.

If we're being completely honest, this editor never really caught on that the true beauty of binder clip cord management was that the clips themselves could fasten to a desk. It was implied in the lihab's Flickr set, but perhaps not made explicit enough for quick-moving eyes. Bakker's photos show exactly how such a setup should look on a reasonably thin desk edge, and illustrates how the nook of the clip handle holds onto all kinds of cables—USB, Ethernet, Mac power port—just so.


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