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The study of transfer in Canadian post-secondary education is a fractured terrain, with vast inter-provincial differences and deep schisms between participating communities. At the time of writing, there exists no comprehensive review that maps the predictors and associated outcomes of transfer in Canada, thus complicating the advancement of this sub-field. Drawing on a review of over 100 academic articles, policy reports, and institutional research documents produced from 1968 to 2020, we discuss the major findings of, methodological approaches to, and gaps within the existing quantitative transfer literature. Further, we outline challenges that Canadian researchers face as they attempt to emulate "best practices" used by international counterparts. In particular, we emphasize the need for the use of more robust administrative data linkages and enhanced methodological sophistication in Canadian quantitative transfer research.

The development of cost-efficient pathways is a topic of increasing political and scholarly interest across many North American jurisdictions. It has been suggested that 'seamless' transfer pathways can provide financial savings to both students and taxpayers. However, such claims are typically based on hypothetical cost calculations, as opposed to empirical analysis. Through this study, we model the relationship between student pathways and borrowing behavior in Ontario, Canada -- the country's most populous province -- using Statistics Canada's novel Education and Labour Market Linkage Platform (ELMLP). Our models produce little evidence that touted transfer pathways systematically reduce either (i) students' propensity to borrow from the Canada Student Loans Program (CSLP), or (ii) the total amount that graduates end up borrowing from the program. We identify the implications of these findings for both policymakers and scholars of social stratification.

Conventional scholarship within the sociology of education and organizations posits that schools achieve legitimacy by virtue of conforming to normative standards, abiding by government regulations and mimicking the forms of successful peers. Through this study, an examination of a sample of 751 Canadian for-profit colleges (FPCs) is performed, revealing the presence of an alternative logic. Rather than conformity, organizations within this sector engage in niche-seeking behaviour, using promotional materials to carve out unconventional identities. They do so by directly drawing on symbolic resources and affiliations from the industrial sectors which they service. These findings are interpreted through the prism of contemporary theorizing within organizational sociology.

For over 25 years, school choice advocates have argued that market competition drives educational organizations to become more differentiated and technically-oriented. However, empirical research has only partially supported this view, observing such outcomes only under certain conditions. To better understand the contingent nature of market effects within education, we draw on sociological and organizational theories that emphasize the "embeddedness" of economic behavior. We test this idea using data from all private schools in Toronto, Canada, a strategic setting that approximates a "pure" market by being mostly free of public governance. We find that, net of factors like school size and age, market segment is associated with the presence of a variety of organizational features. In conclusion, we ponder ways that institutional norms and community ties not only buffer schools from market forces, but also, infuse consumer preferences.

Despite several decades of postsecondary expansion, new research finds youth from northern and rural areas in Canada still experience difficulties making the transition to postsecondary education, and those who do attend take longer to do so. Proximity, we argue, may also have a considerable impact on one's field selection, as many of Canada's larger universities and colleges, who offer considerably more program and degree options, tend to be concentrated in large, urban centers, and in the southern regions of Canada's provinces. This study draws on Cycles 1-4 of Statistics Canada's Youth in Transition Survey -- Cohort A to examine regional inequalities in accessing Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM)-related fields at both the university and non-university levels. Indeed, our findings suggest that location of residence does impact field choices, as students from northern and rural areas were less likely to enter STEM as well as non-STEM, university programs.

Government-sponsored student loans have emerged over the decades as a primary method of financing post-secondary education across most North American jurisdictions. Despite this, the empirical literature examining the correlates of repayment difficulty and default in Canada has remained stagnant in recent years. This study taps into an underutilised data source--the 2013 National Graduates Survey--to examine the relationship between demographics, human capital, borrowing behaviour and other known predictors and repayment difficulty. Our logistic regression models demonstrate that disability status, geographic region and borrowing behaviour are correlated with loan default and repayment difficulty, while failing to verify the existence of other demographic effects routinely found in the existing literature. We discuss the implications of these findings, along with multiple avenues for further empirical work on this topic within Canada.

Post-secondary education (PSE) experienced explosive growth and diversification over the past century, affording students a range of increasingly complex pathways that they can travel to acquire a credential. In various jurisdictions, governments have made significant investments to facilitate student uptake of unconventional transfer pathways that involve stops at multiple institutions. But, there has been limited effort to understand the impact of travelling these unconventional pathways on graduate labour market outcomes. Moreover, existing studies across many jurisdictions typically lack access to detailed measures of academic performance, demographics, and other pertinent controls that could explain the relationship between PSE pathway uptake and labour market outcomes. Through this study we model this relationship by drawing on a large custom linkage between student records from the Toronto District School Board (TDSB) and three large administrative datasets housed in Statistics Canada's Education and Labour Market Longitudinal Linkage Platform (ELMLP). This linkage offers census-level coverage of the population of interest and allows us to longitudinally track students from their Grade 9 year at the Toronto District School Board (TDSB), into and through Ontario PSE, and then as they enter the labour market. Our analyses unearth a series of pathway-based earnings disparities that prove robust to available controls. We elaborate on the implications of these findings for policymakers and draw attention to their relevance for scholars interested in school-to-work transitions in Canada and abroad. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Interdisciplinary programmes have proliferated across post-secondary education in recent decades. Despite this, little attention has been paid to the manner in which interdisciplinary programmes promote themselves to external constituents. To study this process, we conduct a content analysis of the online self-descriptions of 203 credential-granting interdisciplinary programmes across the Canadian university sector. We find that these entities embrace contrasting logics of superior knowledge, labour market outcomes and customisation. We interpret these findings through the lens of contemporary theorising within organisation studies, noting that their ambidexterity bodes well for their continued existence within the sector.

The last two decades have witnessed an explosion in the growth and sophistication of post-secondary education (PSE) marketing. Education scholars have taken notice, both decrying such developments and studying its emerging characteristics. However, to date, empirical studies of PSE marketing have focused on mainstream secular organizations. Few researchers have sought to examine how Christian colleges and universities (CCUs) present themselves via promotional materials. This limits our understandings of how PSE marketing has evolved in different segments of the field. Through this study, we conduct an exploratory thematic analysis of the home web pages of 93 Canadian CCUs. We find that, depending on their field positioning, this organizational population varies in the extent to which it leverages religiosity to construct and communicate their identities. We make sense of these dynamics through the 'nested fields' perspective within organization studies.

Research on promotional behavior within higher education has exploded over the last two decades, spurred on by the intensification of student recruitment. To date, studies have focused on mapping the content of conventional promotional texts (e.g. viewbooks, web sites), to identify how institutions depict themselves through them. By comparison, recruitment events, such as exhibitions or fairs, have received limited scholarly attention. This study aims to ameliorate this gap within the present literature, using observational methods and collaborative auto-ethnography to analyze branding strategies and broader social dynamics within a prominent Canadian university fair. Using such methods, this study identifies (i) variance in the uptake of 'house of brands' and 'branded house' strategies, (ii) diverging degrees of student interest across institutional types, along with (iii) 'niche'-oriented marketing tactics across information booths. Observed patterns are theorized from the standpoint of contemporary research within the field of organizational sociology and higher education marketing.

Research has linked disability to differential experiences and outcomes for students at multiple levels of education. To date, however, available data sources have prevented comprehensive analyses of the statistical relationship between disability and the pathways traveled by students through Ontario post‐secondary education (PSE). Through this study, we examine this topic by leveraging a large multifaceted linkage that brings together rich administrative data from the Toronto District School Board (Grades 9–12), Ontario college and university enrollment records (2009–2018), as well as government student loans and tax records. We use these data to statistically model differences in the PSE pathways traveled by more than 33,000 TDSB students. Our analyses identify statistically significant differences in the likelihood that students with/without disabilities will travel certain PSE pathways. However, such differences shrink drastically once we control for high school‐level factors (e.g., academic performance, absenteeism). We elaborate on the importance of these findings for both social stratification researchers and policymakers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Concern with university rankings have become widespread throughout post-secondary education (PSE), fuelled in part by administrative concerns that demotions down the rank ladder will produce negative institutional outcomes. There is reason to believe, however, that ranking 'effects' may be partially muted in Canadian PSE due to the (1) national system's flatter hierarchical structure and (2) the generally inconsistent findings produced by domestic research on rankings. Through this study, we provide a qualitative analysis of how rankings shaped the institutional selection processes of 90 undergraduate students across three universities in southern Ontario, Canada. Our data indicate that these students rarely consulted ranking publications, relying instead on reputational information available through their informal networks (e.g. peers, family). We theorise that the unique structural characteristics of Canadian PSE minimise the influence of rankings within this jurisdiction, and discuss the practical implications of this finding for both scholars and administrators.

Differentiation has gained widespread acceptance across the Ontario policy community as a mechanism that can improve the overall quality of the PSE system. Though much has been said locally about the supposed benefits of differentiation, including its ability to reduce programme duplication and boost institutional efficiency, little attention has been given to the challenges that promoting differentiation will present. Drawing on insights from the field of Organization Studies, this piece outlines how institutionalized environments, and the behaviour they prescribe, actively suppress the 'natural' occurrence of differentiation. In turn, it presents strategies that can be employed by policymakers to maximize institutional compliance with differentiation policies, as well as a series of peripheral tactics they can employ to disrupt the isomorphic forces within the university sector.

Existing research on marketing within PSE tends to focus on homogeneous groups of high-status organisations. This study ameliorates this gap in the literature, conducting a comparative analysis of promotional materials produced by public universities and community colleges in Ontario, Canada. We find that these two groups draw on unique strategies to communicate their quality to external constituents. Public universities emphasise faculty and institutional-level accomplishments, such as research grants and rankings. Meanwhile, community colleges, lacking access to these symbolic resources, employ corporate-like strategies, such as taglines and non-traditional logos.

Despite excelling at recruiting Black players, studies have repeatedly produced evidence of racial discrimination in the National Basketball Association (NBA). Through this study, we re‐examine the topic of racial discrimination within the NBA through an analysis of the Association's annual entry draft. Using a novel dataset, we statistically model the relationship between player race and draft pick number using pooled data from 1980 to 2021. Overall, we find only limited evidence of racial discrimination. These findings are generally robust to sub‐sample analyses, alternative specifications of our race variable, and alternate statistical modeling techniques. However, analyses performed on sub‐samples of draft picks that participated in the NBA combine—and for whom we have measurements of player athleticism—produce some evidence of racial discrimination. Through such models we estimate that Black players are picked roughly three picks later in the draft. We consider the implications of these findings for contemporary theorizing about racial discrimination in the NBA and more mainstream labor markets. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Competition has intensified substantially within the American law school sector in recent decades. Scholars note that this has augmented pressures to engage in institutional self-promotion, as law schools attempt to distinguish themselves within a severely over-crowded marketplace. To date, however, few have ventured to empirically examine the promotional behavior of law schools. This study takes a first step towards correcting this oversight within the existing literature, by analyzing the web page content of 204 law schools approved by the American Bar Association. It finds that these actors engage in varied promotional techniques that align with the interests of several distinct stakeholders within their environments. These trends are conceptualized through the lens of contemporary theorizing within the field of organization studies.

The current fiscal environment has driven Canadian universities to become more entrepreneurial, seeking out and competing over new sources of funding. Despite such intensifying competition, little effort has been made to document the promotional tactics that Canadian universities are using to render themselves appealing to external audiences. This study examines the contents of the home pages of English-speaking universities in Canada. It finds that, though there are some differences in the tactics that primarily undergraduate and research-intensive universities employ, both generally strive to emulate the same institutional "template". Moreover, the usage of more unorthodox promotional tactics, drawing on labour market rhetoric or discourses of inclusivity, is limited. These findings are theorised in relation to contemporary work within organisational sociology and strategic management.

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to empirically examine how entrepreneurship education is being marketed to students within the Canadian university sector. Design/methodology/approach: A content analysis of the webpages representing 66 entrepreneurship education programs in Canada is performed. Findings: Entrepreneurship education is found to be framed as providing students with a collaborative learning experience, useful hands-on skills with real world applications and an entrepreneurial mindset. Research limitations/implications: This study looks at only one type of promotional material, and thus, further research is needed to triangulate its findings. Originality/value: This is the first study that empirically examines the marketing of entrepreneurship education in Canada.

This study empirically examines how for-profit career colleges in Ontario, Canada market themselves to prospective students. It uses a mixed-methods approach to review the content of 489 online promotional profiles representing 375 unique for-profit colleges. It finds that for-profit colleges adopt several distinct marketing strategies, including (1) emphasizing their expedient provision of modern, practical skills and (2) the convenience afforded by the location of their campuses. We interpret these findings through the lens of the new institutionalist theoretical perspective, highlighting how these organizations draw upon alternative strategies to legitimate their chosen forms.

Canadian community colleges operate within a trying market environment. They compete against a diversified group of post-secondary institutions, ranging from small and relatively unknown for-profit vocational colleges to larger and more prestigious public universities. To date, there has been no effort to empirically examine how Canadian community colleges market their services within this contemporary environment. This study provides a first empirical look at how Canadian community colleges render themselves appealing through promotional materials. Using novel web-scraping techniques and a combination of quantitative and qualitative content analysis procedures, it finds that this institutional type primarily showcases their: (1) linkages to their local community, and (2) modern physical facilities to convey an attractive organizational image. Canadian community colleges are also found to (3) rely primarily on unconventional organizational symbols.

ABSTRACT Considerable scholarly attention has been devoted to how gender, race and various other demographic factors shape the odds of majoring in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) programs. Such work has identified sizable disparities in access to STEM fields across various dimensions. In turn, these empirical findings have informed productive discussions about the social and institutional mechanisms that prevent marginalised groups from entering STEM, along with the potential strategies that could be used at multiple levels (e.g., government and institutional) to address them. Despite the increasing size of this literature, little energy has been devoted to examining the extent to which uptake of transfer pathways is associated with the odds of eventually majoring in a STEM field. Does transfer divert students away from STEM fields? Does it primarily function as an ‘on‐ramp’ for students from other disciplines to enter STEM? We find that students who travel transfer pathways into the university sector are less likely to major in STEM, but those that travel transfer pathways into the community college sector are more likely to major in STEM. We identify some of the mechanisms that could be contributing to these trends and highlight some prospective strategies for addressing the potential structural barriers faced by students wishing to enter STEM. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite increased proportions of students attending some form of postsecondary education (PSE), some social groups continue to face significant barriers and encounter difficulties making the transition. Previous research suggests that proximity to postsecondary institutions may have a positive impact on PSE participation rates, even more so for lower- and middle-income families. We know comparatively less, however, about how these processes operate for social groups in varied social and economic contexts. In Canada, many highly ranked, prestigious universities and colleges (with greater arrays of fields) tend to be clustered in large, urban centers, and in the southernmost parts of Canadian provinces, but it is not clear whether these differences impact PSE outcomes. Drawing on cycles 1 to 4 of Statistics Canada's Youth in Transition Survey (YITS --Cohort A), our findings reveal that individuals from the northernmost parts of Canadian provinces do experience difficulties accessing various types of PSE (and in the timing of doing so). Moreover, our results suggest that much of these location effects are attributable to not only economic differences in terms of parental income but also cultural and dispositional differences related to parental education and their aspirations for their children's education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]