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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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Some Surprising (?) Data on Canadian University Expenditures
I’ve been doing some work on financial data of higher education institutions around the world, and specifically looking at what’s been going on at top research institutions compared to everyone else. And I thought maybe you all would be interested in what I’ve found for Canada. For the purpose of
Arguing for Science in All the Wrong Ways
You can tell it’s pre-budget consultation time in Ottawa because university Presidents are writing op-eds about the importance of research and backing the Naylor Report. But man, are they ever unconvincing. Let’s start with University of Toronto President Meric Gertler’s September 12th Toronto Star op-ed entitled “Don’t Let the World Pass Us
How to Read a Poll
You may have seen the results of a poll out last week from Abacus Canada for Universities Canada, one which purports to look at “how Canadians feel about universities”. I suspect you will hear a lot of this poll over the next few months, especially with respect to research and the Naylor
Twenty Years Ago Sunday
Five years ago I wrote the following blog, under the headline “fifteen years ago today”. I think it’s worth running again (with a couple of minor alterations). On September 24th, 1997, Jean Chrétien rose in the House of Commons to present his reply to the Speech from the Throne. About
Flagship Universities vs World-Class Universities
Almost since the “world-class” university paradigm was established fifteen years ago, the concept has faced a backlash. The concept was too focussed on research production, it was unidimensional, it took no account of universities’ other missions, etc. etc. Basically the argument was that if people took the world class university
How Families Make PSE Choices
Over the last few months at HESA Towers we’ve been doing a lot of interviews of parents of grade 12 students, to help understand what it is that shapes and shifts their perceptions of higher education institutions. I can’t give away much of the content here (that’s for paying customers),
Growth of Presidential Compensation
Let’s do another blog on this topic because everyone loves talking executive compensation. Yesterday we looked at Presidential pay in international comparison and saw that Canadian university Presidents have fairly low pay compared to equivalents in other English-speaking countries. But, one might argue, that’s the wrong metric. Maybe the real
Presidential Compensation
Over the summer, the revelation that the University of Alberta paid Indira Samarasekera two full years of administrative leave at over $550,000 per year after the conclusion her ten-year (two-term) Presidency caused a series of snit-fits, the most notable one being this one from Paige MacPherson, the Alberta Director of the Canadian Taxpayers Federation.
Why our Science Minister is Going to be Disappointed in Statscan
Last week Statscan sent me a consultation form asking my opinions about their ideas on how to change UCASS (the University and College Academic Staff Survey, which like most Statscan products containing the word “college” does not actually include the institutions most of us call “colleges” i.e. community colleges). I’ve
Notes on the Finances of China’s Top Universities
One of my distractions over the past summer has been to learn more about Chinese universities. And, fortunately, this is becoming a lot easier as Chinese universities are starting to put more of their data online. Today, I just want to take you through a bit of a tour of
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