Paul Axelrod

The Story of a Generation, a follow-up to Opportunity and Uncertainty: Life Course Experiences of the Class of ’73 (2000), continues where its predecessor left off. Through surveys and in-depth interviews with a high school class that graduated in 1973, the researchers uncover how these individuals – part of the late baby boomer generation – navigated a rapidly changing world. Through this process, some patterns emerged: parents’ education played a defining role in shaping their children’s futures, while technology revolutionized workplaces and homes. Gender roles shifted, with spouses sharing domestic duties – though not yet equally. And as they aged, this generation found themselves at the forefront of redefining retirement, balancing longer lives with evolving financial and social expectations. Beyond personal stories, The Story of a Generation offers a deeper understanding of how broader social forces – economic shifts, cultural changes, and technological advancements – interacted with individual choices. It’s more than just a study of one group of Canadians; it’s a reflection on how societies transform and how people adapt along the way. For anyone interested in sociology, history, or the human experience, this book provides a rare, intimate look at the passage of time – and the stories we leave behind.

The Story of a Generation, a follow-up to Opportunity and Uncertainty: Life Course Experiences of the Class of ’73 (2000), continues where its predecessor left off. Through surveys and in-depth interviews with a high school class that graduated in 1973, the researchers uncover how these individuals – part of the late baby boomer generation – navigated a rapidly changing world. Through this process, some patterns emerged: parents’ education played a defining role in shaping their children’s futures, while technology revolutionized workplaces and homes. Gender roles shifted, with spouses sharing domestic duties – though not yet equally. And as they aged, this generation found themselves at the forefront of redefining retirement, balancing longer lives with evolving financial and social expectations. Beyond personal stories, The Story of a Generation offers a deeper understanding of how broader social forces – economic shifts, cultural changes, and technological advancements – interacted with individual choices. It’s more than just a study of one group of Canadians; it’s a reflection on how societies transform and how people adapt along the way. For anyone interested in sociology, history, or the human experience, this book provides a rare, intimate look at the passage of time – and the stories we leave behind.

How is policy made in higher education, particularly in the wake of recent economic turbulence? Has policy development converged internationally, and if so, what impact has this had on academic life and institutions? What role does policy-oriented research play in shaping the direction of higher education? Are universities grappling in common ways with issues of access and equity? Making Policy in Turbulent Times provides a historically informed and nuanced response to these and other questions. Distinguished scholars and administrators from across the globe identify economic challenges and pressures facing universities, compare policy developments in numerous jurisdictions, and demonstrate the ways in which networks and lobbyists achieve results. Cogently argued, Making Policy in Turbulent Times contributes significantly to new research, and will be of great interest to scholars and practitioners alike.

An insightful look by leading scholars at the changing face of the contemporary university.

Values in Conflict is a clarion call to policy-makers, business leaders, and the public at large to rethink the current direction of the contemporary university. Paul Axelrod demonstrates that liberal education, the core of higher learning, is threatened by the constricting pressures of the marketplace and shows how political and economic pressures are redefining higher learning. Axelrod demonstrates how, in the race for riches - symbolized by endless rhetoric about the need for Canada to become globally competitive, technologically advanced, and proficient at churning out "knowledge workers" - our schools and universities are being forced by government policy to narrow their educational vistas. The decision-making autonomy that universities must have to provide cultural, intellectual, community-service, and training functions is being eroded. Values in Conflict explains why this is happening - and why it matters.

Based on the longest running panel study of its kind in Canada, this book examines events in the lives of a generation of Ontario residents who graduated from grade twelve in 1973. The study recreates the world of the early 1970s in which these high school students faced the future. It recounts their educational and occupational experiences in the late 1970s, follows their vocational and career pathways during the subsequent decade, and searches for patterns in their personal and family lives through the late 1980s and early 1990s. By painting a portrait of a little-known cohort, this interdisciplinary project provides a wealth of information about the links between schooling and employment in a time of economic instability and addresses the different ways in which women and men attempt to reconcile familial and occupational demands. The study employs life course theory, which explores the dynamic relationship between the individual and the social order. Structural forces such as social class, gender, ethnicity, and race played an unmistakable role in the lives of the Class of '73. So, too, did human agency. Using survey research, historical documentation, in-depth interviews, and personal biographies, the authors seek to explain one generation's emergence from adolescence into adulthood in an era characterised by both opportunity and uncertainty.

Between 1800 and 1914, Canadian society and its school systems were forged, populated, expanded and reformed. The Promise of Schooling explores the links between social and educational change in this complex and dynamic period. It raises and seeks to answer a number of questions: How extensive was schooling in the early nineteenth century? What lay behind the campaign to extend publicly funded education? What went on inside the Canadian classroom? How did schools address the needs of Native students, blacks, and the children of immigrants? What cultural and social roles did universities serve by the beginning of the twentieth century? And how were schools affected by the economic and social pressures arising from the Industrial Revolution? The book contends that educational authorities built and reformed schools in ways that were not always consistent with their idealistic visions. Economic constraints, political expediency, and the agendas of ordinary citizens all influenced the life of the Canadian school in an era marked by dramatic social change. Drawing from an abundant scholarly literature published over the last two decades, this study seeks to expose readers to the richness of the field of educational history. Written for a broad audience, it also hopes, by providing historical context, to stimulate informed discussion about educational issues.

Using a rich array of archival and quantitative sources, and oral testimony from ex-students across Canada, Axelrod explores the characteristics and significance of university life during a trying decade. He describes who went to university, what they were taught, how they amused themselves, how they responded to the pressing political issues of the day, and what became of them after graduation. Axelrod argues that these students shared the aspirations of middle-class communities elsewhere. Dreading the prospect of downward social mobility, they craved the status a university degree and professional credentials might produce. Accordingly, they forged an associational life on campus that challenged the control of paternalistic authorities, perpetuated the values of middle-class culture, and helped them cope with the stresses of the time. Women composed almost one-quarter of the student population -- and faced discrimination inside and outside the classroom. How they coped with this, how they adapted their own expectations, and how they contributed to campus and community culture are extensively discussed. Through the prism of the student experience, Making a Middle Class furnishes fresh insights into the social history of higher education, the history of youth, the history of the middle class, and the history of the Depression.

Focusing on the student experience from the last quarter of the nineteenth century through the troubled 1960s, this collection of fourteen essays examines university life as a part of social and intellectual history. It brings to light the work of a new generation of researchers who have moved away from the narrower concern with institutional growth that has typified most historical writing in this field. Contributors include Paul Axelrod, Michael Behiels, Judith Fingard, Chad Gaffield, Yves Gingras, Patricia Jasen, Nancy Kiefer, Susan Laskin, Malcolm MacLeod, Lynne Marks, A. B. McKillop, Barry M. Moody, Diana Pederson, Ruth Roach Pierson, James Pitsula, John G. Reid, and Keith Walden.