Having too many Canadians — many of them young — unemployed and too many skilled job openings unfilled at the same time doesn’t make much sense.
Neither does looking primarily to immigration to solve the latter problem.
Local industrialist Ken Rowe, in comments at a Halifax fundraiser last week, wasn’t the first to make those observations and he certainly won’t be the last. More...

By Rachel Bachman. Amid a Building Boom, Schools Mine Data to Justify Their Spending and Tailor Their Offerings to Undergrad Demand.
UCLA discovered its recreation center drew 43,734 unique visitors last year, or almost 5,000 more than its student enrollment. Purdue University discovered students who worked out more often had higher GPAs.
That is some of the research colleges are mining amid criticism of a building boom of gyms with rock-climbing walls and specialty swimming pools. Working to justify their expenditures, schools are tracking student habits and... More...

By Rachel Bachman.

By Greg Quinn. Prime Minister Stephen Harper may be losing one of his political trump cards — his record on the economy — just when he needs it most.
Canada's job growth, among the strongest in the industrialized world after the global recession, has slowed by about half one year before the country's next election, even as U.S. employment accelerates. Harper, who won a majority government in 2011 campaigning on his economic stewardship, now finds his record under attack by the opposition. More...

By Dave Boucher. When Gov. Bill Haslam announced the creation of the Tennessee Promise scholarship program, the state anticipated 20,000 students might apply.
A little more than a week before the Nov. 1 application deadline, the number of students embarking down the path toward free tuition at a Tennessee community college or college of applied technology is closer to 45,000. More...

By David Shepardson. President Barack Obama says colleges and universities should be able to offer racial preferences in college admissions if they do it in a "careful way."
In an interview published Monday with the New Yorker magazine, the president said schools should be allowed to use racial preferences in admissions. More...

By CCAP. In the traditional Indian caste system, certain individuals were so low they were not even classified; they were the “untouchables,” now called the dalit. Although strictly against Indian law, recent news reports say these people often are forced to do horrible tasks to this day, such as removing human excrement from latrines by their bare hands.
The academic dalit in America — the collegiate underclass — consists of two groups. Among the faculty, they are the adjuncts, persons with high teaching loads, low pay, minimal or no office space, and no job security. Although not latrine workers, they are the closest thing academic America has to that. Among the students, the “untouchables” are those students who do not make it through the system, the dropouts. More...