By Alex Usher. So, last week we talked about growth in non-academic staff; however, due to data limitations, we could only talk about dollars rather than numbers.  This is because no one actually collects non-academic staff numbers in Canada, and so most of the data (and anecdotes) around “academic bloat” comes from the US.  Last winter, I became sufficiently frustrated with fact-free arguments about “bloated administration” that I devoted part of my holiday to gathering data on this phenomenon.  I never quite finished the project back then, but last week gave me the nudge to try to put all of this data on the table. More...

By Alex Usher. There is an interesting initiative afoot to create something called the Inuit Nunangat University.  A workshop report on the concept is here. Today, I thought I would contribute to the debate by looking at what such an initiative might cost.
Some background: the idea of an Arctic university is not new.  Many people have noted that Canada is the only member of the Arctic Council that does not have a university north of the Arctic Circle. More...

By Alex Usher. The Globe’s Gary Mason wrote an interesting article yesterday about the Gupta resignation.  Actually, let me qualify: he wrote a very odd article, which ignored basically everything his Globe colleagues Simona Chiose and Frances Bula had reported the previous week, in order to peddle a tale in which the UBC Board fired Gupta for wanting to reduce administrative costs. More...

By Alex Usher. Yesterday, the Council of Ontario Universities released the results of the Ontario Graduates’ Survey for the class of 2012. This document is a major source of information regarding employment and income for the province’s university graduates.  And despite the chipperness of the news release (“the best path to a job is still a university degree”), it actually tells a pretty awful story when you do things like, you know, place it in historical context, and adjust the results to account for inflation. More...

By Alex Usher. So, yesterday I talked about a big increase in access in the UK, which seems to have little to do with tuition fees.  Today, let’s talk about a developing story in the United States, where a lowering of net prices seems to have had a big impact on access. More...