By . So this weekend at the NDP convention, delegates voted in favour of a free tuition policy. Based on a totally unscientific scan of twitter afterwards, here are the ten most common arguments in favour of this move, and why each of them is wrong. More...
By . About two and a half years ago, I said universities and scientists were headed for a catastrophic break because university Presidents were more inclined to gratefully accept whatever new dollars came their way rather than fight for research priorities. That break may actually happen next week, for evil things are reaching my ears about Tuesday’s federal budget. More...
By . When writing last week about superclusters, I neglected to go through the actual “economic impact statements” that were being touted by the clusters themselves. It seems that the Industry Science and Economic Development Canada (ISED), has to some degree accepted the statements. More...
By . University leaders have to put up with a lot of crap from politicians and business people. There’s a lot of genuflecting to whatever the fads and feelings of the day are, just so they can appear “relevant” and “in tune”. More...
By . Canada usually alternates between good news and bad news when it comes to higher education data. Good news: we’re getting marginally better data on profs, for only $1 million per year. Bad news: we have literally no data on students beyond registration data anymore (social/economic background, anyone?), and no one seems to care. More...
By . Over the last few years I have noted a significant trend in provincial government spending across Canada, one which we termed “feed the student, starve the schools”. Basically, governments are a lot happier giving money to the children of middle-class voters students than they are to universities and colleges because there are more votes there. More...
By . A couple of months ago, I read a rather interesting book called National Innovation Systems and the Academic Enterprise, which is a collection of essays edited by David Dill and Frans van Vught. It’s a collection of essays about national – and in the case of the US, subnational – innovation policies, and while the quality of the national essays is a bit uneven (the Canadian one was marked mainly by overuse of the word “neoliberalism” and excessive off-point moaning about how SSHRC is hard done by compared to the other granting councils) it did make me really think about one significant concept which I hadn’t really thought about before: namely, science federalism. More...
By . To Paris, where a couple of big changes in education policy have led to student demonstrations. Not particularly large or effective demonstrations (not yet, anyway), but significant nonetheless. More...
By . Everyone, it sometimes seems, wants more international students. But is it possible to have too many international students? And if so, when? These days, it’s a delicate question: but where public dollars are at stake, it’s a question worth asking. More...
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