Thursday, May 23, 2024
1:00 to 3:00 PM ET
This panel will explore innovative policy approaches to optimize the higher education system for excellence and efficiency in Canada and the US. Speakers will discuss perspectives on reducing bureaucratic hurdles, promoting fiscal responsibility, and incentivizing academic rigor and innovation. The discussions will focus on policy reforms aimed at enhancing educational outcomes, fostering competition, and empowering students with valuable skills for the workforce.
AGENDA
1:00 pm - 1:30 pm: Introduction and overview of the topic by Graham Dobbs, Senior Economist, the Dais
1:30 pm - 2:30 pm: Panel discussion with guest speakers
2:30 pm - 2:50 pm: Peer discussions in breakout rooms
2:50 pm - 3:00 pm: Concluding remarks and feedback
Please complete the Mid-Point Feedback Form by Wednesday, May 29
Make your favourite hot drink, find a quiet corner, and read through these materials ahead of the session.
Report: The State of Postsecondary Education in Canada (Introduction & Chapter 1), Higher Education Strategy Associates
Report: Built to Scale? Microcredentials Use Among Digital Professionals (Executive summary & Introduction), the Dais
Article: The Future of Higher Education, Forbes
Article: HBCUs, Higher Ed, and Democracy's Future, Jill Anderson
As a Senior Economist, Graham (he/him) is a part of the research team at the Dais at TMU. At the institute, Graham explores educational and technological innovations in the Canadian labour force and its impact on occupational distributions and transitions.
In the past, Graham developed tools and insights designed to make labour market information more accessible and navigable for Canadians. His previous research topics include following taxable earnings of post-secondary graduates and Red Seal journeypersons to provide credible wage information to students, mapping the access of career service use among Canadian adults, and broadening access to skills and job demand through online job posting dashboards.
Graham has a degree in Economics and holds a Master of Arts in Economic Policy from McMaster University. He was also a sessional lecturer at the undergraduate health sciences program at McMaster, teaching the economics of healthcare. Graham grew up in Toronto and devotes his time outside of work to building courage, discipline, and resiliency through coaching and playing a variety of sports in the Greater Toronto Hamilton Area.
Andy Smarick (he/him) is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, where his work focuses on education, civil society, and the principles of American conservatism. He is a member of the University of Maryland System’s Board of Regents. Previously, he served as the chair of the Maryland Higher Education Commission and as president of the Maryland State Board of Education. His other government experience includes serving as an aide in the White House Domestic Policy Counsel of President George W. Bush, legislative assistant at the U.S. House of Representatives, deputy assistant secretary at the U.S. Department of Education, New Jersey deputy commissioner of education, and legislative aide at the Maryland state legislature. Previously, Smarick was a Morgridge Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. He helped found a college-prep charter school for disadvantaged students and the National Alliance for Public Charter schools, and he was a founding board member of 50CAN. Smarick has authored or edited four books, including The Urban School System of the Future. His work has also been published in outlets such as The Wall Street Journal, The Atlantic, Washington Post, Education Week, among others. Smarick received a B.A. in government and politics, summa cum laude and with honors, from the University of Maryland and a Master of Public Management from the University of Maryland’s School of Public Policy.
Andy's Contact Details:
Email: asmarick@manhattan.institute
Jake Hirsch-Allen builds public private partnerships between North America’s governments, workforce development organizations, colleges and universities, and LinkedIn Talent Solutions. Jake advises an impact investing firm, a large US foundation, Avalanche VC, the US CCSSO and several startups. He speaks regularly on the changing nature of work and learning and is passionate about immigration, interoperability, open and user-owned data, skills-based-hiring and -learning, human technology and AI governance.
Jake is a Director on the Boards of the Ontario Tech Talent and the Canadian Club. He founded Lighthouse Labs, Canada’s foremost software bootcamp and Hacking Health. A former intellectual property and international criminal lawyer, Jake was also Chair of the Technology Committee of the Global Education Platform, taught Global Health at McMaster University and clerked at the Supreme Court of Israel.
Jake' s Contact Details:
Rashné Jehangir, PhD. (she/her), is Professor of Higher Education and the Beck Chair of Ideas in the College of Education and Human Development at the University of Minnesota- Twin Cities. A Professor of Higher Education, she is also the founding Director of the First Gen Institute and was recently named the Inaugural Dean of Education Opportunity Programs at her college She is a scholar practitioner who spent the first decade of her career in student affairs in higher education and has strong roots in the federally funded TRIO SSS and McNair Scholars Program. She is also inaugural co-editor of the Journal of First-generation Student Success. Her research focuses on equity and access with specific attention to the confluence of structural constraints in the academy that impact the experience of poor and working class, refugee and immigrant students, and students of color many of whom are first in their family to go to college and graduate school. Her scholarship is featured in several journals including Journal of College Student Development, Innovative Higher Education, Urban Education and the Journal of the First-Year Experience and Students in Transition. Her book Higher Education and First-Generation College Students: Cultivating Community, Voice and Place for the New Majority was published by Palgrave Macmillan.
Rashné's Contact Details:
Email: jehan001@umn.edu
Stephanie M. Breen (she/ella), Ph.D., is a Research Associate at the Pell Institute for the Study of Opportunity in Higher Education at the Council for Opportunity in Education. Her research focuses on post-secondary access and success for first-generation, low-income, and historically marginalized students in higher education, as well as equity-minded practices for organizational change in higher education. Dr. Breen is a proud alumna of the McNair Scholars Program at Suffolk University in Boston, where she earned her BS in History. Subsequently, she completed her master’s in Sociology and Education at Teacher’s College, Columbia University. Dr. Breen completed her Ph.D. in Student Affairs in Higher Education from the University of Maryland, College Park, where she remains a consultant with the College Admissions Futures Co-Laborative at the university.
Stephanie's Contact Details:
Email: stephanie.breen@pellinstitute.org
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/doctora/
Here are a list of resources that were mentioned during this session!
Book: Decolonizing Methodologies, Linda Tuhiwai Smith
Report: Talent Disrupted: College Graduates, Underemployment, and the Way Forward, Strada Education