By Alex Usher. I read with interest this piece in University Affairs about “The Slow Professor”, which is the name of a book by Maggie Berg and Barbara Seeber – English professors from Brock and Queen’s, respectively – who think that professors need to push back against the hecticness of the modern academy.  To wit:

“The authors offer insights on how to manage teaching, research and collegiality in an era when more professors feel ‘beleaguered, managed, frantic, stressed and demoralized’ as they juggle the increasingly complex expectations of students, the administration, colleagues – and themselves. ‘Distractedness and fragmentation characterize contemporary academic life,’ they write. Today’s professors, they argue, need to slow down, devote more time to ‘doing nothing,’ and enjoy more pleasure in their research and teaching. It’s time, they say, ‘to take back the intellectual life of the university.’”

Hmm.  Hmmmmm. More...

By Alex Usher. I recently came across this little blogpost from the UK bemoaning the fact that the Vice-Chancellor of Imperial College described professors as “like small business owners”.  The poster then went on to wonder: “if professors are small businesses, what kind of micro-state is the contemporary university?” More...

By Alex Usher. Is it reasonable to suggest that outsourcing of some IT functions might have privacy implications? Sure.  Might those implications violate the terms of a collective agreement?  Possibly; depends on the wording of the CBA.  But academic freedom?  No, that’s ridiculous. More...

By Alex Usher. How much of that will end up heading towards PSE?  If you simply look at the Liberal manifesto (which I dissected here and here), pretty much nothing. More...

By Alex Usher. So, yesterday I showed you some of the data comparing expected parental contributions for Early Childhood Education (ECE) and PSE, and how much more we ask of younger, poorer parents compared to older, generally wealthier ones. More...

By Alex Usher. Today, HESA is releasing a paper called “What We Ask of Parents: Unequal Expectations for Parental Contributions to Early-Childhood and Post-Secondary Education in Canada”, by Jacqueline Lambert, Jonathan Williams, and me.  The gist of it is: “Holy cow, we ask parents to contribute a lot more to ECE than PSE – why is that?” You can click here to read the whole report, or you can see the short version as an op-ed in today’s Globe and Mail. More...