Department of Education

If Cheetoh Hitler is reelected and manages to shut down the Department of Education, wouldn't that make higher education an even more disjointed mess than it already is? Which countries don't regulate higher education at the national level, and how do they make it work?

 

Canada has no federal department of education. The idea would be so obviously anathema to Quebec that it has never really been advanced.

"In and for each Province the Legislature may exclusively make Laws in relation to Education," states the Constitution Act, 1867. The Constitution enacts some conditions on certain provinces pertaining to Catholic or Protestant education. The Constitution Act, 1982 creates French or English minority official language education rights binding every province.

The Constitution seats government responsibilities to Indigenous people principally with the federal government. Previously this meant that the federal government oversaw and funded a system of Indigenous schools. These schools were often subcontracted out to White churches. The system of schools was appalling, generally prison-like, typically abusive, including sexually, and more than a few times directly deadly to the children in its care.

Now, thankfully, the responsibility means that the federal government is the principal funder of education for Indigenous people but schools are either the same schools as for the general population and overseen by the provinces, or are administered by the Indigenous nations.

The federal government interfaces with K-12 education minimally. There's a system of block transfer payments from the federal to provinces part of which is to help with education, but details of how this is spent are near entirely up to each province.

The federal government interfaces with pre-K education and with child-care and outside-school early learning programs contemporaneous with the K-12 years a little, and it's a recent phenomenon. The Justin Trudeau Liberals, pressed from their left by the NDP and Greens, introduced big conditional federal funding to provinces for child care and early learning. The conditions are set in agreements between the federal government and each province. The federal ministry responsible is the social policy ministry.

The federal government interfaces with post-secondary education in several important or highly visible ways, but it doesn't come from one role or power centre.

There are the block transfers above. More directly, the federal government funds Canada Student Loan and unemployment adjustment programs which collectively support vocational education and academic degrees at all levels, funds extensive scholarships and grants for university- and college-based research, grants student visas, and grants visas to stay in Canada post-graduation for some international students.

The federal government leaves regulating post-secondary institutions nearly entirely to the provinces. The federal goes along with what the provinces do.

Federal ministries responsible for these direct or semi-direct interfaces with post-secondary education include the ministries for employment, science, culture, and immigration.

 

I totally forgot that Canada's colleges are regulated by the provinces. Is institutional accreditation handled by the provinces or private organizations like the U.S.?

When it comes to K-12, the U.S. is pretty similar. While the federal government does send some funding and has some K-12 regulations, governance and funding are primarily at the state level.

 

The provinces.

The province has authorized each university or college to offer degrees or other credentials. For each new program a university or college proposes, the province will approve or deny the application.

What about the ongoing review functions performed when a US institution applies, self-studies, and is externally reviewed for institutional accreditation? These are performed partly by the provinces and partly by processes at each university or college involving external examiners, like this Cyclical Program Review at York University in Toronto.

Universities Canada (formerly the Association of Universities and Colleges of Canada) for institutions principally organized to offer degrees, Colleges and Institutes Canada (formerly the Association of Canadian Community Colleges) for institutions like community colleges, which in Canada mainly offer certificates and diplomas but not degrees, and groups like Career Colleges Ontario (for private vocational colleges) can choose to admit or not admit institutions to their membership.

I've seen a non-Canadian body or two try to use Universities Canada membership as an analogue to regional accreditation.

This will build an initial whitelist of degree-granting institutions in Canada all of which are legitimate, but it will fail to generate a list of anywhere near all legitimate degree-granting institutions in Canada, and this distance is increasing over time. Not only are bachelor's degrees a growing sideline at quality institutions that qualify for CIC but not UC membership, but there's a cadre of small private institutions, typically religious, that grant legitimate degrees but qualify for neither UC nor I think for CIC for reasons of their type but not quality.

Universities Canada agrees with me that "Universities Canada doesn't do accreditation" and that the mistaken idea it does needs to be corrected.

Specialized/professional accreditation for post-secondary programs in Canada is provided by a mix of Canadian and international bodies.

A very few Canadian universities hold institutional accreditation from the US. Canada's public distance education giant Athabasca University was the first to attain regional accreditation (from Middle States in 2006; they've been on probation since November 2023, but this looks like Middle States giving Athabasca a bunch of writing assignments Athabasca will successfully complete if it puts in the time. Which, I know, is a lot of what accreditation is.)

A few Canadian religious institutions hold faith-based US institutional accreditation. The ABHE criteria have a carve-out permitting three-year Canadian bachelor's.

 

I think Mexico has a somewhat disjointed system, too, but like Canada, the state and local governments are involved in authorizing universities to offer degrees. Or, government universities can give authority to private schools.

In the U.S., while the state governments license schools and do some basic quality checks, quality control is mostly handled by private organizations. This makes things confusing because, in other countries, you can just check with the government to verify the legitimacy of an institution. If the U.S. Department of Education were to be eliminated, then states would have to determine which accreditors will be recognized. Or, they could follow CHEA, but that would force MSCHE to go back to seeking CHEA recognition.

If it were up to me, I wouldn't recognized TRACS or ACCSC. I would also be tempted to ban the use of for-profit college degrees. I would cause a mess and would love every minute of it.

 

It's 40 years since I been hearing about some candidate saying they will close the Departmnet of Education.
It's just elections season talk, nothing will happen.

 

That’s what I thought about Roe v Wade.

 

I wear glasses. Doesn't help.

 

It worked, because Perry was appointed Secretary of Energy, where his predecessor was a nuclear physicist. The Department of Energy was the very department he ultimately couldn't remember he had wanted to shut down. And Perry was appointed to that position by Trump!

 

I thought Roe v. Wade was untouchable, but conservatives successfully played the long game, which people on the left are terrible at. Progressives and leftists are particularly bad at being pragmatic not realizing that Supreme Court justices and other federal judges have lifetime appointments.

 

Roe had already been "touched". "Mugged", more like. Speaking strictly legally, Roe was a terrible piece of work, so bad that the Court essentially redid it in subsequent cases, all about as bad. Roe lasted as long as it did because it was a "results oriented" opinion which is exactly what Courts should not do.

In addition to being an awful piece of judicial legislation, Roe cut off the debate about reproductive rights. We are now HAVING that debate and I think it's a healthy thing to do. Abortion rights as passed by the people into their state constitutions are much harder to attack than a bad example of judicial overreach.

Take the time. Read the Dobbs decision for yourself. Dobbs is legally correct. What people don't like is the results of the Dobbs decision. Well, that's what our legislative processes are for. My opinion won't be popular. I understand that. But I believe firmly that either the people govern themselves or they don't. What we are seeing nationwide now is the people making legitimate choices about what their rights will be and to me, that's the very essence of American democracy.

 

I'm no legal expert, but the 2nd Amendment decisions the past few decades have not been legally sound and can be easily overturned in the future. If Americans want no restrictions (most do want some restrictions), then that needs to be explicitly stated in the Constitution with no mention of a well-regulated militia.

 

Thank you for sharing.

We are currently in a mess on abortion rights and reproductive rights. It's especially painful for me to hear the sad stories about women that want their baby but need the abortion for medical reasons. For example, that especially sad story where the woman with twins had one viable and one nonviable fetus. The nonviable fetus was going to kill the viable fetus and potentially the mother. The mother had to travel out of state for her medical care. This is so wrong it's infuriating. I understand that you're not advocating against abortion though.

The mess we're in will eventually be fixed because that's what most people want and we live in a democracy. So that is what will likely happen. We just have to get the House, Senate, and Executive all Democrat and pass a national law establishing sanity and women's right to choose what she and her doctor believe are best. Sooner would be better than latter.

 

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/health/2024/06/24/texas-anti-abortion-heartbeat-law-infant-deaths-study/74168707007/

The Texas antiabortion law has caused more babies to die after birth. It makes perfect sense. Babies are being born that would have previously been aborted because they were defective. I feel so sorry for these mothers. It’s cruel and inhumane.