News Articles

When Guillermo Acosta looks out the window at Humber College’s Faculty of Media & Creative Arts he sees a fleet of construction cranes, but also something else — the future of how education, industry and the arts will work together.

Read More > “When polytechnic schools and industry collaborate, students gains skills and businesses solve problems”

If you want to understand how the environmental studies landscape in Canada has changed, think back to Walkerton, says Sean Beingessner.

In 2000, an e.coli outbreak in the water supply of the small Ontario town sickened hundreds of residents and killed seven. The disaster resulted in more stringent training and water-testing requirements for water-system operators. It was shortly afterwards that Algonquin College’s Water and Wastewater Technician program began, in response to an unexpected new industry need borne out of changing social and legislative norms.

Read More > “Environmental studies evolve to manage new threats, climate change pressures”

This is an excerpt from Polytechnic Education: A Vision for Ontario.

Read More > “Workforce transformation: How polytechnics are positioning Canada for an uncertain future”

When Larissa Meleiro walked into her first day of her hospitality internship at a Hampton by Hilton hotel in Toronto, she knew she was ready to be there.

“The hands-on training I received at George Brown gave me the skills to handle different situations that I encountered,” explains Meleiro, who enrolled in the Hotel Operations Management course at Toronto’s George Brown College in 2019. “I went to a college for that exact reason, because I was looking for technical skills and hands-on learning.”

Read More > “How hands-on education can help get you the job you want”

Krysten Payne, whose father was a teacher, remembers being strongly encouraged to choose university over college after high school.

Payne, 29, describes himself as someone who likes to work with his hands – his first clue that university maybe wasn’t the best route to his dream job. Still, to please his family, Payne struck a compromise with his parents. He took applied technology courses after high school at Antigua and Barbuda Institute of Technology. From there, he studied at Toronto’s Seneca College, in a transfer program that qualifies graduates for university degree programs.

Read More > “Employability rules: Students in Canada are prioritizing programs that offer skills training”

At Kwantlen Polytechnic University in British Columbia, the bachelor of psychiatric nursing students learn a holistic approach to mental health care. Fittingly, their own education takes a holistic approach too.

Students learn theory, practical skills, and applied research in clinical settings, but they also work within the community to observe the gaps in our current mental health system.

Read More > “How experiential learning builds students’ confidence and skills”

Trish Josephs knows what industry customers want from polytechnic institutions. As an executive at many businesses over the past 30 years, she liaised with schools about the kind of workers industry needed.

Read More > “Why industry leaders should be looking to Canada’s polytechnic schools”

Successive governments have struggled to address Canada’s weak innovation performance. To solve our most pressing challenges — climate change, an aging population and inequality among them — new solutions are critical.

One thing is clear: Canada’s innovation shortcomings will not improve until its small- and mid-sized businesses are active contributors. Applied research is built to enable these contributions.

Read More > “Applied research should be at the forefront of innovation strategy”

This is an excerpt from Pichette, J., Rizk, J., & Brumwell, S. (2021). Making Sense of the Micro: Building an evidence base for Ontario’s Micro-Credentials. Journal of Innovation in Polytechnic Education, 3(1), 10-14. This article has been republished with permission from the Higher Education Quality Council of Ontario.

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Short, skill-focused courses and associated credentials are not new. Many employers and organizations have long offered in-house training and other informal learning opportunities for professional development and retention (Oliver, 2019). Powered, in part, by advancements in digital technology and evolving labour market demands, micro-credentials have emerged as a new form of focused learning with the potential to respond to both the modern hiring needs of employers and the training needs of adults looking to advance or pivot in the labour market.

Read More > “Why does Ontario need short, flexible credentials?”