Born and (mostly) raised in Calgary, Karl has been taking courses on and off at AU since 1999. At one point, he changed his major from Computing Science to Computing Science because the new program requirements fit what he’d already taken better. Since then, he switched to English and graduated (w/Great Distinction he likes to add) proving along the way that it is entirely possible to complete an entire AU course within a three week period. If only he had done this at the beginning of the course instead of in the last extension.
This is not something he advises unless you are desperate, masochistic, or, ideally, both.
He is currently the managing editor of The Voice Magazine, where he tries to put his education to use helping other students as they provide content for The Voice
Post-Secondary Delays Statistics Canada has recently released a report (http://www.statcan.ca/Daily/English/030704/d030704a.htm) on a study done of 20 year-olds and their attendance (or not) of post-secondary education. The study shows that there are a number of factors that can be used to predict if people graduating from high-school will not go on immediately to post-secondary education. The… Read more »
Private Schooling – Public Funding The Ontario government is celebrating (http://ogov.newswire.ca/ontario/GPOE/2003/06/25/c7408.html?lmatch=&lang=_e.html) how it has managed to simultaneously rob its public education system and at the same time please many parents. A recent press release reminds Ontarians about how their provincial government passed legislation that allows parents to receive a tax-credit based on the tuition they… Read more »
Alberta Relents? The Alberta Government might be starting to get the message. Over the past week, additional funding has been announced (http://www.gov.ab.ca/acn/200306/14634.html) for the post-secondary system. 30 million dollars has been allocated to Alberta Learning’s post-secondary institutions to be used for operating costs and maintenance. That money has to cover all the post-secondary institutions in… Read more »
The Planets is a group of eight classically trained musicians brought together through a Popstar style of competition in the United Kingdom late in 2001. Their first album, Classical Graffiti was released in February 2002 and debuted at number one on the classical charts, where it remained for three months. The music itself is primarily… Read more »
The Numbers Game Statistics Canada has recently released (http://www.statcan.ca/Daily/English/030611/d030611b.htm) a report on University Financing across Canada. The report starts off with the happy news that, for the first time in 15 years, revenues from public sources increased faster than those from private sources. Could it be that the governments are finally starting to realize the… Read more »
They say you never have a second chance to make a first impression. This is advice that the recording industry would have done well to take as, until now, I had never really thought specifically about any one record label. Now I have, and the results are probably not what the label would like. What… Read more »
Why Distance Education Matters As AU students, you’re all aware of the various reasons why good distance learning institutions are useful, if not vital to the education of Canadians. But now the federal government has statistics of its own (http://www.statcan.ca/Daily/English/030604/d030604b.htm) to reference. Statistics Canada, following up on an earlier study about how distance affects post-secondary… Read more »
Working to Learn not Working? Statistics Canada has recently released a report (http://www.statcan.ca/Daily/English/030526/d030526a.htm) on the correlation between dropping out of high school and working. Not surprisingly, they have found that students who work 30 hours per week or more at paid employment are more likely to drop out than students who work moderate hours or… Read more »
I Wanted to be Wrong Sometimes it would be better to be wrong than right. My previous comments (http://www.ausu.org/voice/search/searchdisplay.php?ART=304) on BSE aka Mad Cow disease are one of those times. Now it has finally hit us here in Alberta (http://www.inspection.gc.ca/english/anima/heasan/disemala/bseesb/bseesbindexe.shtml), but in actual cattle herds rather than the deer population. This is going to have… Read more »
Alberta Attacking Students The Government of Alberta was pleased to announce (http://www.gov.ab.ca/acn/200305/14359.html) Bill 43, in support of a seamless post-secondary system. Unfortunately for Alberta and Athabasca University post-secondary students; apparently seamless means sealing themselves away from pesky student requests. One of the most interesting things about the Act is that the tuition cap, that small… Read more »