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Category: Academia

(#fake)Tenure, Governance, and Academic Freedom

If you follow higher education news from south of the border, one scrap you’ll probably have noticed over the past year or so is the one over tenure in Wisconsin.  Until recently, tenure provisions at the University of Wisconsin were inscribed in state law.  Last year, Wisconsin Governor and erstwhile presidential candidate Scott Walker decided to remove tenure protection, leaving the University’s Board of Regents to inscribe it in their own rules.  At the same time, the Governor gave university

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February 8, 2016 3 Comments

Tenure and Aboriginal Culture

You may or may not have noticed a story in the National Post over the weekend relating to a scholar at the University of British Columbia named Lorna June McCue, who has brought a human rights tribunal case against UBC for denying her tenure.  The basics of the story are that UBC didn’t think she’d produced enough – or indeed, any – peer-reviewed research to be awarded tenure in the Faculty of Law; Ms. McCue argues that since she adheres to an

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January 26, 2016 6 Comments

One In, One Out

I had a discussion a few months ago with a government official who was convinced she knew what was wrong with universities.  “They have no discipline,” she said.  “They just go out and create new programs all the time with no thought as to what the cost implications are or what the labour market implications are, and so costs just keep going up and up.” I told her she was only half right.  It’s absolutely true that universities have no discipline when it

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January 25, 2016 6 Comments

Living the Lie in Research Universities

Take the following two thoughts/statements: 1.       “At our institution, research and teaching are inseparable, two sides of the same coin” 2.       “At our institution, if you are a good researcher, you get more money and you get teaching leave to do more research” Both these statements can’t be true.  Which do you think is false? Back in pre-89 Czechoslovakia, Vaclav Havel liked to tell a story about a shopkeeper who displayed a sign saying “workers of the world, unite!”.  The shopkeeper did

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October 9, 2015 3 Comments

Liberal Arts Deserves Better Arguments

You may have noticed that I failed to award a “worst back-to-school” piece for the second year running.  This is because the bad stuff took a while to come out.  Rest assured, it came, and I now present two of them. First is Heather Mallick’s little missive on Liberal Arts in the Star last week.  The utterly lazy premise is this: advances in ICT have changed the world dramatically, so what matters now is synthesis.  And by God, Liberal Arts gives

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September 29, 2015 No 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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