By Amanda Brijmohan
This past year, the Pathways to Education and Work (PEW) research group has been funded by the Ontario Council for Articulation and Transfer (ONCAT) to research where effort should be invested in developing and maintaining educational pathways between colleges and universities. Findings from the project suggest that only 23% of universities’ pathway agreements are with colleges within commuting distance of the university, whereas 66% of students who transfer from a college to a university do so from a college within commuting distance of the university. These findings provided the basis for developing a decision-making tool, principles and framework to help policy makers, educational institutions and faculties/departments in guiding college-university pathway development.
Recognizing that the tool could be further enhanced by listening to the expert insights of interest groups, the PEW research group held a policy consultation symposium on April 5th, 2016. Attendees included pathways developers, administrators from both the college and university sectors, as well as policy-makers from multiple levels of government.
After providing the research base for the findings, and introducing the decision-tool, principles and framework, the team posed the following questions to the audience:
Expert feedback was first provided by Dr. David Trick, President of David Trick and Associates, and by Cindy Dundon Hazell, Professor Emeritus at Seneca College. Dr Trick observed that there are 3 dimensions of policy:
Dr Trick argued that governments tended not to be very good at setting strategic goals, and that this limited the effectiveness of its encouragement of student transfer.
Professor Hazell observed that 47% of all transfer students do not complete their first qualification, and that many transfer students do not follow established pathways. Professor Hazell argued for moving from pathways to principles and frameworks supporting student transfer.
Participants also provided feedback on the decision-making tool through a mixture of open forum Q & A, and breakout discussions. In the plenary after the breakout sessions, participants supported the general principles of student transfer and thought that these could be extracted to a document separate from examples and success stories. Some participants sought specific attention to equity groups, and others sought variations in the language used in the decision tool.
The consultation was concluded by closing remarks made by Glenn Craney, Executive Director of ONCAT. Mr Craney welcomed the decision-making tool and supported the team’s collaborative approach to developing it. He supported the different layers of action to bring people together to support student transfer. Mr Craney noted that the tool ties together themes that ONCAT had been considering recently into a comprehensive package.
The team plans to revise the tool and its report in light of these and other feedback comments made through feedback forms, and during breakout discussions throughout the consultation.