Canada is right to focus on applied research
It is in this context that Minister of State for Science and Technology Gary Goodyear announced this week the government’s decision to refocus the National Research Council, Canada’s main government funder of science, on research that is more directly relevant to industry in Canada.
The NRC was originally created in 1916 to support applied research, technology transfer and business development.
But after the Second World War, it followed the path laid down by the United States, focusing more on basic research and less on work that could be useful to industry. Read more...
Focus on education; no, really
Everyone also knows, and they have known it for a very long time, that spending on aboriginal education has been inadequate, and still is. The country actually spends less on aboriginal education than it does on schooling for everyone else, which, as many people have said for a very long time, is a national disgrace.
And yet there was something important that emerged from a meeting of retired political leaders and Winnipeg's business elite who gathered here Thursday to discuss the province's future.
They agreed the provincial outlook is grim unless an overwhelming effort is made to redress aboriginal poverty and, in particular, the sub-standard education system on reserves. Read more...
HEC releases list of unrecognised universities
The press statement issued by HEC says that it will not recognise any degree or certificates issued by these institutions. The list of the private universities or institutes, which have been granted charter by the respective authorities without fulfilling the cabinet criteria for the establishment of new university or degree awarding institute including no objections certificate (NOC) from Higher Education Commission is given below. Read more...
Colleges offer discounts, but you have to look
By Andrea Burzynski. Colleges offer discounts as enrollments fall short, according to Forbes report. Among the colleges still seeking students for the fall term: Lewis & Clark College in Portland, Oregon, the University of Maryland, College Park, The New School in New York City, and Arizona State University in Tempe.
Many leading U.S. colleges and universities face a shortfall in enrollment for fall classes and will offer price discounts as they compete for students in an ever expanding higher education market, according to Forbes. The magazine highlighted 50 public and private U.S. colleges listed in the Princeton Review's "Best Colleges" list that are still accepting students in their 2013 freshman classes. Read more...
Au Québec, l’Université recrute selon les règles du privé
Blog Educpros de Michel Abhervé. L’UQAM à Montréal recrute des professeurs et le simple lecture de l’annonce met en évidence combien nos pays sont différents. Dans le poste concernant la gestion des entreprises collectives (organisations à but non lucratif, coopératives, organisations non gouvernementales, etc.), nous notons deux particularités (pour nous).
D’abord quant au statut: alors que pour nous l’Université des fonctionnaires et des contractuels de droit public, au Québec il est mentionné que le traitement sera établi « selon la convention collective UQAM-SPUQ ». Suite de l'article...
Blag Educpros Michel Abhervé. L'UQAM à Montréal recrute des professeurs et le simple lecture de l'annonce met en évidence combien nos pays sont différents. UQAM i earcach Montreal múinteoirí agus díreach ag léamh an fógra béim ar conas a bhfuil ár dtíortha éagsúla. Sa an seasamh maidir le bainistiú na n SOEs (eagraíochtaí neamh-bhrabúis, comharchumainn, eagraíochtaí neamh-rialtasacha, etc.). Níos mó...
Education Woes Seen as Achilles' Heel of Brazil
By JENNY BARCHFIELD. There's a storage room just off a university lab that gives students more experience than many can handle: Skinned pigs and cats, disembodied cow livers, intestines, brains and the other unidentifiable detritus of years' worth of dissections fill a dozen wading pool-sized vats to the brim.
With the veterinary department's incinerator long on the fritz, the stomach-turning, formaldehyde-drenched mass of animal carcasses and organs grows by the day.
Similar scenes of neglect and decay play out across the sprawling, once-stately campus. Laboratories routinely flood when it rains, lecture halls reach oven-like temperatures because the burned-out air conditioning units were never replaced, the Internet works only intermittently and students hardly dare venture out after dark for fear of being mugged. Read more...
Higher Education Shell Games
The New Case for Liberal Arts
Four years later I graduated with a degree in philosophy and English — without having ever taken a single political science course. Perhaps that’s why I’ve got such a soft spot for the kind of flexibility and intellectual range that are the hallmarks of the American liberal arts college. Read more...
U.S.-Mexico education partnership announced
The forum's mission is to bring together government agency counterparts from Mexico and the U.S. to deepen cooperation on higher education, innovation and research. It will also draw on the expertise of the higher education communities in both countries, according to the State Department. More than 18,000 Mexican and U.S. university students study in each other’s countries annually. The Mexico-U.S. Commission for Educational and Cultural Exchange (COMEXUS) oversees the Fulbright-Garcia Robles Scholarship Program, the flagship program in U.S.-Mexico academic exchanges. Read more...