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Category: Academia

Academic Service (Third Mission)

On Friday, I talked a little bit about rankings which looked at universities’ “Third Mission”.  This is a new term for many North American readers, but it’s not much different than when we use “service” at an institutional level rather than an individual level.  But the notion of “service” is itself a pretty slippery one, so perhaps it is of interest to delve into this topic a bit. Universities were, from the very beginning, seen as economic assets.  Italian cities

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December 10, 2018 1 Comment

Sagas

Yesterday, I talked about how adaptation in universities is a much more a matter of cultural change rather than something that can be doing using traditional planning or managerial techniques.  But this leads to the question: how do you change culture in a loosely-coupled, mostly horizontal organization? The answer, I think, is pretty simple.  It lies in storytelling, and more specifically, in Sagas. Sagas were, a form of oral history for the Nordic people.  There were King’s sagas, which told the

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November 2, 2018 5 Comments

Culture

It occurs to me, after sitting in a conference talking about change in universities, that nearly everything in the public discourse about how universities need to change is nonsense.  Well, maybe not nonsense, but at least seriously beside the point. Here’s the issue.  When you see politicians or consultants or university leaders talk about “where the university/my university needs to go”, they are almost always talking about ends.  The university needs to be more skills/employment-focused.  The university needs to adopt

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November 1, 2018 3 Comments

Bad Coverage

A clutch of recent media stories about higher education are kind of irritating me.  Specifically, it’s the media credulity on display which is so disheartening. One major source of irritation has to do with stories which get written when a professor is suspended or dismissed. We’ve had two of these recently, one in Nova Scotia and one in BC. The one in Nova Scotia concerned Psychology professor (what the hell is it with Canadian psychology profs, anyway?)  Rick Mehta, who

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October 4, 2018 No Comments

Time to Talk Teaching Assessments

Something very important happened over the summer: The Ryerson Faculty Union won its case against the university in Ontario Superior Court against the use of student teaching evaluations in tenure and promotion decisions (it was silent on merit pay, but I’m fairly sure that’s because Ryerson academics don’t have it – as legal precedent I’m 100% certain merit pay is affected, too).  This means literally every university in the country is going to have to re-think the evaluation of teaching

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September 10, 2018 3 Comments

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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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