Category: Education

  • Soft Skills and Standardized Tests

    The governor of New York recently proposed that 50% of teachers evaluations be based on the results of standardized tests. I’m not going to go into great detail about how much of fundamental misunderstanding of the purpose of standardized tests that is. The short version is that standardized tests give the most useful information when…

  • The Problem with “College Costs” Articles

    Everyone associated with the Higher Education field, and a lot of people who aren’t, seem to like to talk about the cost of Higher Education. From Kevin Carey’s book “The End of College” to New York Times opinion pieces and their responses, and more responses this is a hot topic. For a Canadian perspective I…

  • Indigenous Access to Post-Secondary

    Aboriginal people make up 6% of BC and the percentage is rising quickly. From an economic standpoint there’s a huge wage gap between aboriginal and non aboriginal workers pay based on looking at full time workers with the same career classification. But the good news is that the more education an aboriginal person has the…

  • How is this a threat?

    Last week NASPA’s blog had a post called “Five Megatrends Threatening Student Affairs (and How to Turn Them Into Opportunities)” written by Laurence N. Smith and Albert B. Blixt. It was an interesting read, but I have to take issue with one of their points. Trend #3: Changing student demographics Overall competition for students will increase…