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7 avril 2013

2013 taxes for Canadian postdocs: The goal is consistency

By David Kent. Each year, our site gets flooded with visitors looking for information on taxation policy with respect to Canadian postdocs. Of course, much of this enthusiasm was sparked by the decision in Budget 2010 of the Canadian Government to stipulate specifically that the 2006 scholarship exemption would not be applicable to postdoctoral fellowships. Some of our readers are no doubt part of that affected cohort (2006-2009) and may find information they are looking for in our previous entries:

2012 Taxes for Postdocs: Dredging up the Past
2011 Taxes for Postdocs: At least we know the rules this year
The CRA response to CAPS (guest blogger Carl Wonders)
Let the Discussions Begin (guest blogger Marianne Stanford)
2010 Canadian Taxes: Did you get your T2202 and T4a?
Budget 2010: Post Docs, be careful what you wish for…

The inconsistent status of postdoctoral fellows across the country has resulted in some very unfortunate personal situations for our highest tier of young academics, including back-dated claims from the Canada Revenue Agency of thousands of dollars, long legal battles and differences of several thousands of dollars of take home pay for postdoctoral fellows due to receiving a different tax form for the exact same national fellowship. Read more...

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7 avril 2013

UBC dominates B.C. university salary rankings

By Chad Skelton. Four of five highest-paid post-secondary employees work there. Four of the five highest-paid employees at B.C.’s universities and colleges work at just one institution: the University of B.C., according to The Vancouver Sun’s exclusive database of public-sector salaries. According to The Sun’s fifth annual salary database, UBC president Stephen Toope is the highest-paid post-secondary employee in the province with total remuneration of $531,088 in 2011-12. Toope’s salary went up slightly from 2010-11, when he made $528,504 and also topped the list of post-secondary employees. Toope announced Wednesday that he would be stepping down from his post next June. After Toope, the next three highest-paid post-secondary employees also work at UBC: dean of medicine Gavin Stuart at $499,150, radiology professor Francois Benard at $475,544, and business professor Dan Skarlicki at $435,847.
The only non-UBC employee in the top five is University of Victoria president David Turpin, who made $430,760. And UBC’s generous compensation extends beyond the top five list. Read more...

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7 avril 2013

How much is a B.A. worth? Universities don’t know

By Simona Chiose. Last week, I tried finding basic information about student outcomes on five university websites: The University of Alberta, York University, McGill, Simon Fraser and the University of New Brunswick. It was not a scientific study, just a rough and random approximation of what an undergrad and their family may do at this time of year, as they are weighing admission offers. Read more...

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7 avril 2013

Can today's universities change with the times?

We’ve asked university deans and presidents, colleges, industry leaders and students to talk about our education system. Are universities sufficiently connected to our schools? Are they preparing students for jobs? And are they co-operating with each other, and with colleges?
Julia Christensen Hughes
"Interestingly, the situation we face today is not entirely dissimilar to a crisis in higher education encountered in the United States in the early 1800s. At that time, the economy was shifting from one that had been largely agrarian to one that was industrial." Read more...

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7 avril 2013

Studying the case for a new Mrs. degree in marriage

By Zosia Bielski. Susan Patton’s incendiary letter, titled “Advice for the young women of Princeton: the daughters I never had,” is the spiritual equivalent of a nettlesome aunt at a holiday dinner. Whispering and tugging at your sleeve, she foretells great misery if you don’t couple up, soon. Published last Friday in The Daily Princetonian, Patton’s letter exhorted young women at the school to “lean in” less and husband hunt more, preferably ahead of graduation. Patton – class of ’77 – argued that women who settle for men below their intellectual level eventually come to resent those husbands, herself included. The divorcée believes there is nowhere better to meet your brainy match than at university. Read more...

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7 avril 2013

Tie university funding to outcomes; four hours in the classroom

By Simona Chiose. The Higher Education Quality Council of Ontario (HEQCO) is recommending that future funding for colleges and universities be partly based on individual mandates and outcomes. Some courses, such as large introductory classes, could even be offered online, or through a blend of online and in-class learning. While enrolling more students is important to the public, the report also argues that quality must be preserved in any growth plan. The recommendations were made in a report that reviewed the submissions made by colleges and universities in response to a consultation process begun by Glenn Murray, the former minister of Training, Colleges and Universities. Read more...

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7 avril 2013

Academics 'dropping regional accents' to fit in at elite universities

By Victoria Ward. Academics with broad regional accents suffer "tacit prejudice" at top universities and feel obliged to adopt posher accents to avoid being patronised, according to a study. They fear that unless they hide their local dialects they will be classed as "outsiders" and marginalised in the event of redundancies, researchers found. Although discrimination on grounds of gender, race or sexuality is no longer tolerated, they said the desire by universities to be classed as "elite" meant that prejudice against regional accents continued to go unchallenged. Michelle Addison, a PhD student at Newcastle University who conducted the study, said that "talking the talk" by using an accent that carried connotations of intelligence had become commonplace among academics anxious to "fit in". Read more...

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7 avril 2013

Universities should ban country-specific student societies, professor says

By Hayley Dixon. Although such a step could be seen as “social engineering” it could build bridges between those coming from abroad to study and their British counterparts, said Paul White, pro-vice chancellor for learning an teaching at the University of Sheffield. While universities are generally good at helping students form friendships they also create “close communities of students who don’t interact with each other”, Professor White said.
For example Chinese, Indian and British students all tend to stick with their national groups, he claimed. An international faculty of Sheffield University - City College, in Thessaloniki, Greece – has already banned national student societies, he told the Westminster Higher Education Conference.
“They want their students from the Balkan region not to feel that they are Serbs of Kosovans or Macedonians,” he said. More...

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7 avril 2013

Nature's publishers to launch open-access platform for data sets

By Paul Jump. In a further sign of the growing scientific prominence of data sets, Nature Publishing Group has launched a new open-access platform that will peer review and publish detailed descriptions of their contents. Scientific Data will publish “data descriptors”: citeable descriptions of the contents of data sets that will contain structured information created in-house by NPG.
However, the platform will not host the datasets themselves. These must be made available via other public databases: ideally ones which are “recognised” within their research communities. The platform, which will open for submissions in the autumn and launch in spring 2014, will focus initially on the life and environmental sciences, before expanding into other areas of the natural sciences. Read more...

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7 avril 2013

Adelaide v-c wants end to fixed-time contracts in Australia

By Paul Jump. Australian academics should not be contractually bound always to split their time equally between teaching and research, the vice-chancellor of the University of Adelaide has said. Employment contracts in Australia typically stipulate that academics should divide their time between research, teaching and administration according to a 40:40:20 ratio. But Warren Bebbington told the National Tertiary Education Union’s national conference in Melbourne on 4 April that the formula should be more flexible, reflecting academics’ current priorities. Read more...

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