By Alex Usher. I am a big fan of the economist Paul Romer, who is most famous for putting knowledge and the generation thereof at the centre of  discussions on growth.  Recently, on (roughly) the 25th anniversary of the publication of his paper on Endogeneous Technological Change, he wrote a series of blog posts looking back on some of the issues related to this theory. More...

By Alex Usher. You may recall that last week I posted some curious data from CUDO, which suggested that the ratio of undergraduate “classes” (we’re not entirely sure what this means) to full-time professors in Ontario was an amazingly-low 2.4 to 1.  Three quick follow-ups to that piece. More...

By Alex Usher. I’ve had a few people ask me in recently: “what’s going on with students these days?”  Or words to that effect.  Although they don’t say so explicitly – they assume I know what they mean – what they are talking about is (in no particular order): that Atlantic article from a couple of months ago about intellectually-coddled students, the imbroglio at Yale, and the highly amusing Yogapocalyspe at the University of Ottawa. More...