The State of Higher Education in the Maritimes

The Maritime Provinces Higher Education Commission is hosting a conference on the state of higher education in the Maritimes from Nov. 18 to 20, at the Hotel Beaus‚jour in Moncton.

This year's conference is entitled, Transitions: Strategies for Working Together, and aims to map the transitions facing higher education in the Maritimes and the means through which they can best be addressed.

The conference will feature presentations by:

• Claude Lajeunesse, president of Ryerson Polytechnic University. Mr. Lajeunesse will deliver the keynote address focusing on quality, relevance and accessibility as ways for universities to be more accountable.

• Ann Dowsett Johnston, editor of the Maclean's Guide to Canadian Universities. She will speak about the 1998 Canadian university survey results, due to be published this week.

• Brian Milton, interim executive director, Canada Millennium Scholarship Foundation. Mr. Milton will focus his remarks on the Canada Millennium Scholarships, a centrepiece of the Canadian Opportunities Strategy outlined in the 1998 federal budget.

A panel composed of Maritime university and community college presidents will discuss the shape the relationship between colleges and universities will take in the future.

Concurrent sessions will be running throughout the two-day conference focusing on such topics as: accountability, expectations of higher education, technologically-mediated education, accessibility and many other topics.

In addition, a series of short presentations will focus on exciting new developments in the field of higher education including: the Atlantic Canada Community Colleges Consortium, student debt, graduate outcomes, and many other topics.

This is the second conference of this type hosted by the Maritime Provinces Higher Education Commission. The commission was established in 1974 by the Council of Maritime Premiers to assist the provinces and the institutions in attaining a more efficient and effective utilization and allocation of resources in the field of higher education in the region. The commission's mandate was renewed in 1997 to focus on service to students and to emphasize its work on quality assurance, information management, and other cooperative regional arrangements.