Enhancing Access for Racialized Students: Transitional and Bridging Programs in Ontario’s Post-Secondary Education
Bibliographic record
Abstract
AbstractIn Ontario’s post-secondary education system, transitional and bridging programs are often framed as solutions to access and retention gaps for historically marginalized populations. This dissertation investigates the experiences of racialized students enrolled in these programs, with the goal of understanding whether such initiatives genuinely address structural inequities in higher education or merely serve as compensatory pathways. Drawing on eight in-depth interviews with racialized students, survey data from 42 participants, and an analysis of relevant institutional and provincial policies, the research critically engages with how racialized students navigate these programs post-admission. Guided by an anti-colonial theoretical framework and a mixed-methods research design, this study situates transitional and bridging programs within broader discourses of equity, access, and institutional reform. Findings indicate that while these programs may ease entry into higher education, their effectiveness is frequently limited by institutional constraints, racialized pedagogical assumptions, and the lack of systemic accountability. Narratives from participants reveal the persistence of exclusionary practices and racialized expectations that continue well beyond the transition period. This study argues that unless these programs are embedded within institution-wide commitments to anti-racism, they risk reinforcing rather than dismantling existing hierarchies. Recommendations are offered to reimagine transitional and bridging programs as transformative equity-oriented interventions rooted in systemic change, rather than short-term solutions to systemic problems. Keywords: racialized students, transitional and bridging programs, higher education access, systemic inequities, anti-colonial theory, educational equity.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.002 | 0.002 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.013 | 0.004 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.005 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.004 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".