By David Kent. Over the coming weeks, I’ll be breaking down the fantastic information found in the Canadian Association of Postdoctoral Scholars 2013 Survey of Canadian Postdocs. To start this, I thought I would focus on the most surprising finding in my mind: 53.1% of the 1,830 respondents were either landed immigrants or holding a work permit. This is an incredibly high fraction that represents a huge opportunity for Canada, but only if policies and programs are designed to maximize the influx of such talent. More...

By Melonie Fullick. The current Ontario government has been formulating ideas for systemic change in higher education since at least 2005, when the Rae Review was released. Some of the issues raised in that review are still with us now – and one of those issues is university differentiation, which has come up yet again via a data set (PDF) from the Higher Education Quality Council of Ontario (HEQCO) and most recently in the provincial government’s draft (PDF) of a framework for differentiation (here’s a good summary by Gavin Moodie). More...

By Léo Charbonneau. Relevant to this discussion is the fact that there has been a high turnover of university presidents in the past few years (an issue we recently covered in University Affairs). By my count, 56 new presidents have been appointed since 2009, a turnover at the top of well over 50 percent in four years. Did we use this opportunity to hire more women?
Yes, in fact. In a blog post I wrote in the spring of 2009, I counted 14 women university leaders, with two more female appointments scheduled to take effect within a couple of months. So, as of August 2009, there were 16 women heading what were then 94 member institutions (17 percent, or roughly one in six). Depending on how you look at it, then, the current numbers aren’t so bad. A rise from 16 to 22 women in four years is nearly 38 percent. On the other hand, women still account for fewer than one in four university presidents. More...

Blog Educpros d'Isabelle Barth. « La femme serait vraiment l’égale de l’homme le jour où, à un poste important, on désignerait une femme incompétente. »
Personne n’a mieux résumé que Françoise Giroud  la question de l’inégalité dans le milieu professionnel. Elle nous rappelle que le pouvoir dans les milieux économiques, politiques, militaires est détenu par les hommes. Et observe que les femmes n’y ont pas accès sauf à être « hyper-compétentes ». Enfin, elle sous-entend que les hommes qui occupent ces postes n’ont peut-être pas eu la même exigence de compétence. Suite...