Fostering quality in Canada's post-secondary institutions

The studies we have published so far provide a conceptual framework for thinking about quality issues in PSE and an assessment of the current state of quality measurement; document changes in the funding and regulation of Canada’s colleges and universities over the past 15 years and assess the impact on the ability of the PSE system to deliver on quality objectives; and examine the capacity for in [...] Some people recommend a more market-oriented approach to the financing and regulation of PSE: give the money to the students, let the institutions set tuition rates, and let student choice determine the allocation of funds across institutions and programs. [...] The Finnie/Usher model involves looking at the learning process in terms of four components: what students bring with them at the outset; what resources and pedagogies are supplied by the 8. Finnie and Usher’s focus on the former in their discussion of the framework, but subsequent work on ranking systems by Usher and Savino (2006) speaks to the latter. [...] The former includes facilities available to students (such as the ratio of professors to students, the size of the library holdings, access to computers, quality of the classroom facilities and residences). [...] It is not satisfactory to measure the quality of a university or college by the grades of the incoming students (beginning characteristics) or the size of the library (resource inputs).