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Harvey P. Weingarten — Skills in postsecondary education: Where to now?

We recently published a series of reports describing the skill levels of entering and graduating postsecondary students. The most telling observation made in those reports is that too few students are graduating with superior literacy and numeracy skills and too many — about one in four — are graduating with literacy and numeracy levels that […]

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Harvey P. Weingarten — Why is the “Q” word in our name?

Why did those who created this agency include the word quality in its name, even though it resulted in one of the clumsiest acronyms — HEQCO — on the face of the earth? I think it’s because they were smart and prescient. They understood that there are a million questions one could ask and research […]

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Harvey P. Weingarten — Quality assurance: A simple concept that we overly complicate

If you were to read all that is out there about quality assurance in higher education, you might be left with the impression that quality assurance is a complicated, nuanced, arduous, complex concept and process that defies rigorous measurement, and that will take a decade or more to get it right. I am fond of […]

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Harvey P. Weingarten — Undergraduate programs: Plus ça change…

I graduated from McGill University in 1974 with a B.Sc. in Honours Psychology. In a flight of fancy, I decided to see whether that program still exists and, if so, how the current program compares to the one I graduated from 43 years ago. These are the trips down memory lane one is increasingly inclined […]

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Harvey P. Weingarten — The evolution of learning outcomes: Now comes the exciting part

I have experienced three phases in the evolution of the learning outcomes concept. Learning outcomes refers to what students should know and be able to do as a result of the education they get in their postsecondary programs. The first phase of the learning outcomes concept was already underway when I started at HEQCO in […]

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Harvey P. Weingarten — Measuring Academic Quality: International Perspectives

In my last blog, I argued that the quality of a postsecondary education could be measured by the degree to which it met academic requirements or needs. I also argued that one non-negotiable and essential requirement or need of a postsecondary education is that students receive an education that equips them with the knowledge and […]

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Harvey P. Weingarten — What is Academic Quality?

When I started working at the Higher Education Quality Council of Ontario (HEQCO) I asked the obvious question, given the title of the organization: What is quality? I became even more invested in this question when I discovered that the legislation that created HEQCO required us to advise the government on the quality of Ontario’s […]

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Harvey P. Weingarten – FutureSkills Lab: A Step in the Right Direction

Recently, the federal finance minister’s Advisory Council on Economic Growth recommended the creation of a national organization — the FutureSkills Lab — to serve as a laboratory for the development and measurement of skills. This proposed laboratory represents a significant and progressive advance that can increase Canada’s global competitiveness and offer its citizens the economic […]

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Harvey P. Weingarten – “Plans are useless but planning is indispensable.”

These are the words of former US President Dwight Eisenhower about how one plans for battle. One reason “I like Ike” is that his words capture HEQCO’s philosophy of planning. He understood that plans are useless when they get too specific, try to predict the future with certainty, and prompt fights over every comma in […]