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    Canadian Post-secondary Enrolment Trends

    Recently, Stefanie Ivan, an enrolment management consultant and Royal Roads associate faculty, and I had an opportunity to identify enrolment trends facing Canadian higher educational institutions for a series of Royal Roads University webinars. In this blog, I will share what we found.

    Let me describe our methods. First, we reviewed publicly-available data on the web that included provincial data reports as well as those compiled by Higher Education Strategy Associates, Globe and Mail, Statistics Canada, Canadian Undergraduate Survey Consortium, and the Council of Ministers of Education. Second, we collected comments from our social media network and Canadian colleagues. Third, we received input from students currently enrolled in the Royal Roads University Graduate Certificate in Strategic Enrolment Management.

    Here are some of the aggregate enrolment trends we uncovered:

    • College enrolments are continuing to grow, mostly due to continued international student enrolment growth. Some declines were reported in the Maritimes. Also, there is a reduction in demand for trades programming due to low unemployment.
    • University enrolment is mostly stable or recording slight increases/decreases. Some of this is due to part-time student enrolment increases.
    • Students may be shifting away from big urban research universities.
    • A slight increase in inter-provincial mobility was experienced in the Maritimes.
    • Admission conversion rates are becoming less predictable.
    • Completion rates have been impacted in some areas.
    • There is a growing interest in a gap year for direct-entry high school students.

    And here are the student-type enrolment trends we found:

    • Indigenous enrolment and completion rates are lower than rates for non-Indigenous persons. But the Indigenous birthrate is still the fastest among the groups monitored.
    • International student enrolments continue to lead enrolment growth.
    • Attrition rates are still impacted by the pandemic and high school students who did not seem to be prepared for post-secondary studies.
    • The enrolment mix continues to change. Visible minorities, learners with disabilities, and learners with mental health issues are increasing.
    • Students want to be primarily on campus, with some hybrid instruction.
    • Trust building with communities continues to impact some enrolment.

    Here is the Video from the webinar.

    We will be doing a follow-up webinar to explore the enrolment strategies that institutions are using to address these challenges. Feel free to share any strategies your institution is using or hoping to implement in the next year, and we will include them when we present on this topic for our follow-up webinar on Tuesday, March 21st. Here is a link to sign-up if you want to listen in or (hopefully!) participate in our discussion.

    The times are certainly uncertain and changing.

    -Clayton Smith

    Interrogating Race and Racism in Postsecondary Language Classrooms

    Language is power, in the hands of linguistic gatekeepers and the dominant class. From “coloniality of power” (Quijano, 2000) to “coloniality of language” (Veronelli, 2015, p. 113), English has become a “colonial language” (Kachru, 1986, p. 5) and a “language for oppression” (Kachru, 1986, p. 13), replacing the implementation of carrots and sticks in the colonial times in the form of instilling raciolinguistic ideologies of the centre into the periphery. Language is raced and race is languaged (Alim et al., 2016). Racialization, synonymous with racial classification, is a process of “Looking like a Language, Sounding like a Race” (Rosa, 2019). The racialization of language subjugates, subordinates, dehumanizes, and others people of colour.

    Join us as we interrogate race and racism in postsecondary language classrooms in our upcoming IGI-Global book. We will use the perspective of intersectionality between language and race in higher education classrooms, by problematizing raciolinguistic injustice and hierarchy with the monolingual and monocultural norm as a frame a reference, combating racism, linguicism, native speakerism, and neo-racism, as well as calling for changes, emancipation, and pedagogical paradigm shifts so as to teach English for justice and liberation (Huo, 2020). This book will investigate race and racism in postsecondary language classrooms, how race intersects with language, how power impacts and shapes language teaching and learning, and how hegemony and ideology perpetuate linguistic injustice and discrimination against racially minoritized students. It will examine how racism has created institutional, structural, and individual barriers for language learners in higher education, as well as potential strategies to combat racism, linguicism, and neo-racism.

    We ask prospective contributors to submit research-based and data-driven chapters to elicit stories, counter stories, garner racialized experiences and perspectives, and represent resistant voices through multiple research methods, including but not limited to interviewing, observation, discourse analysis, narrative inquiry, ethnography, journaling, focus groups, surveys, and case studies. Here is the Call for Proposals.

    Recommended Topics

    • Race, racialization, and racism
    • Intersectionality between race and language
    • Language and identity
    • Linguicism and linguistic imperialism
    • Monolingualism, native speakerism, and standardization
    • Native-non-native dichotomy
    • Power, hegemony, and hierarch
    • Raciolinguistic ideology
    • Neo-racism (i.e., based on nationalities, ethnicities, and cultures)
    • Accentism
    • Language diversity and linguistic rights
    • Raciolinguistic justice and social justice
    • Discourses and stories in different geographic and language teaching contexts across the globe
    • Narratives and counter-narratives
    • Barriers, challenges, and resistance
    • Lived experiences
    • Multilingualism, plurilngualism, and translanguaging
    • Anti-oppressive and decolonizing language policies
    • Anti-racist and anti-colonial pedagogies and practices
    • Critical pedagogies in global higher education language teaching contexts
    • Ethical internationalization in postsecondary language classrooms

    This book is intended for scholars, researchers, faculty, instructors, and professionals in English language teaching, higher education, language education, applied linguistics, sociolinguistics, educational linguistics, anti-racist education, critical multilingual studies, translingual studies, and those who are interested in the research of race, language, and the area of teaching English cross-culturally and translingually in higher education classrooms, such as faculty and instructors, educational developers who design the inclusive, anti-racist, and anti-colonial curriculum, and administrators and policymakers who oversee academic, especially language programs. The book will also be useful for teacher candidates, non-native English-speaking students, undergraduates, and graduate students in TESOL/ESL, second language acquisition, and higher education programs.

    Important Dates

    • March 31, 2023: Proposal Submission Deadline
    • April 14, 2023: Notification of Acceptance
    • May 14, 2023: Full Chapter Submission
    • June 27, 2023: Review Results Returned
    • August 8, 2023: Final Acceptance Notification
    • August 22, 2023: Final Chapter Submission

    If you would like to discuss a potential book chapter idea, contact us at raceandlanguage@gmail.com.

    -Xiangying Huo (University of Toronto) and Clayton Smith (University of Windsor)

    References

    Alim, S., Rickford, J. R. & Ball, A. F. (Eds.) (2016). Raciolinguistics: How Language Shapes Our Ideas about Race. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.
    Huo, X. Y. (2020). Higher education internationalization and English language instruction: Intersectionality of race and language in Canadian universities. Springer. doi:10.1007/978-3-030-60599-5
    Kachru, B. B. (1986). The alchemy of English: The spread, functions and models of non-native Englishes. Pergamon.
    Quijano, A. (2000). The coloniality of power and social classification. Journal of World-Systems Research 6(2), 342-386.
    Rosa, J. (2019). Looking like a language, sounding like a race: Raciolinguistic ideologies and the learning of Latinidad. Oxford University Press.
    Veronelli, G. A. (2015). Five: The coloniality of language: Race, expressivity, power, and the darker side of modernity. Wagadu: a Journal of Transnational Women’s and Gender Studies, 13, p. 108-134.