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Author: Alex Usher

La loi 32

Come.  Let us speak together, honestly, about Loi 32, An Act Respecting Academic Freedom in the University Sector in Quebec.  Because it sets a new standard both in government interference in universities and in all-around sheer holy-crap-this-is-what-public-policy-is being-reduced to. If you read the law itself – and please do so, it’s short and only takes a minute or so –  you’ll see that for the most part it is pretty bland.  The meat of it, in articles 4 and 5,

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April 13, 2022 2 Comments

CARPA vs Tekes/IIA.

As noted back in our budget commentary, the Government of Canada seems to have abandoned the idea of a Canadian Advanced Research Projects Agency (CARPA – see here, here and here for previous takes on this) in favour of a yet-to-be-named innovation-and-investment agency said to be based on the Finnish agency Tekes and the Israel Innovation Authority.   A number of people have asked me to explain what the difference is between the two.  As always, I am here to oblige:

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April 12, 2022 No Comments

Budget 2023

Obviously, it’s ridiculously early to start thinking about next year’s budget, but there are several things happening between now and next spring which could end up making Budget 2023 a pretty critical one for post-secondary education in Canada.  Here’s my thinking: –          2022-23 marks the final year of the Budget 2018 research funding package – that is, the response to the Naylor Report on fundamental research.  For the past five years, the sector has been living off the planned increases which were baked into the

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April 11, 2022 No Comments

Budget 2022

Hi all.  Our budget commentary is now up and available here. This was a difficult budget to evaluate.  By no stretch of the imagination can it be called an “education budget,” and some of it seems to have been thrown together; yet at the same time some of the changes seem quite profound. First, it must be said that there are areas where the Budget is most notable for what it did not do.  It did not renew the Business Higher Education

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April 8, 2022 No Comments

How Europe Measures Equity in Admissions

When doing international comparative work in higher education, you’ll realise that the difficulty in comparing systems goes far beyond differences in system architecture and inconsistencies in data.  It’s more that there are genuine differences in how some issues are framed.  Take for instance, the issue of equity in admissions.  In North America, great positivists that we are, we would measure equity in admissions.  Report on them.  Try to improve on them.  We can see this in the United States all

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April 6, 2022 No Comments

One Thought to Start Your Day

One Thought to Start Your Day is our founder and CEO Alex Usher’s popular daily blog, brimming with up-to-the-minute insights and informed opinions on today’s higher education industry.

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