The World of Higher Education Podcast Listen now →

The World of Higher Education Podcast Listen now →

Category: Academia

The Canadian Way of Higher Education Co-ordination

Yesterday I talked a little bit about how competition, not co-operation, is in Canadian universities’ DNA (east of Manitoba, at any rate).  But that has never stopped governments from trying – usually fitfully and half-heartedly – from trying to create more co-ordination within the system.  David Cameron, in his 1991 book More Than an Academic Question (still probably best single-volume history of Canadian higher education), analyzed these attempts in some detail.  What’s interesting is how things have changed over time. One obvious

Read More »
November 17, 2017 2 Comments

Cognitive Dissonance in Academia

On a pretty regular basis, some academic or other pens a piece in the popular press talking about overproduction of PhDs.  Take for example this 2015 Jonathan Wolff piece in the Guardian with a  piece entitled “Doctor, doctor we’re suffering from a glut of PhDs who can’t find academic jobs” in which he obsesses about a figures in a 2010 Royal Society document suggesting that of 200 people who complete a PhD only seven will get a permanent academic post and one will become

Read More »
November 13, 2017 1 Comment

Unconscionable Disciplinary Selfishness

Everyone knows this story, or a variant of it, even if it never hits the papers and no one wants to name names.  It goes like this: Professor X simply won’t retire.  It’s not that he/she (though it’s mostly he) is staying on for themselves, you understand. It’s for the department.  If he/she (mostly he) left, there simply wouldn’t be any guarantee that a new tenure line would go back to the department.  That position might go to another department

Read More »
October 20, 2017 7 Comments

How Sessionals Undermine the Case for Universities

Last year, I wrote a blog post about what sessionals get paid, and how essentially it works out to about what assistant profs get paid for the teaching component of their jobs and that in this sense at least one could argue that sessionals in fact are getting equal pay for work of equal value. I got a fair bit of hate mail for that one, mostly because people have trouble distinguishing between is-ought arguments.  People seemed to think that because

Read More »
October 11, 2017 4 Comments

The Politicization of University Accounting

Back in the fall, the Canadian Alliance of University Teachers (CAUT) published an interesting little guidebook called CAUT’s Guide to Analyzing University & College Financial Statements, written by Cameron and Janet Morrill, two profs at the University of Manitoba’s Asper School of Business.  Stripped to its essentials, it purports to be a DIY guide for faculty to help hold their institutions to account over finances. Nothing wrong with that.  Learning how to read financial statements is a good thing.  The

Read More »
January 10, 2017 1 Comment

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.

Subscribe

Search Posts

Search Publications

Social Media

Linkedin Youtube Spotify

Recent Posts

More thoughts on...