Some days, I go hunting for blog topics and what comes up are a bunch of ideas that might have made an entire post back in the days when this was a 450-word-per-post blog, but definitely don’t cut it in the 1100-word-per-post era. But they are still good topics! So today, I am throwing out a pair of unrelated thoughts for your consideration. Workloads A couple of weeks ago I mused about the causes of the current round of labour
I’m not sure how one measures the state of labour relations in a given field, but since we are on the fifth major university strike of the year (Manitoba and Concordia University Edmonton have settled; Acadia, Lethbridge and Ontario Tech are ongoing), I am pretty sure no one will object if I say that 2021-22 is the worst year Canadian academia has ever had. A perfectly reasonable question is: why is it all kicking off now? If you look at
Following yesterday’s piece on developments in micro-credentials, I want to address what I see as the back-lash against them. I see theoretical and the practical objections emerging. The theoretical charge against micro-credentials is led by OISE’s Leesa Wheelahan and Gavin Moodie, who recently penned Gig qualifications for the gig economy: micro-credentials and the ‘hungry mile’ in the journal Higher Education. As the catchy title suggests, it does not mince words. According to them, micro-credentials: “contribute to the privatisation of education
Who owns universities? It seems like a simple question but it’s actually deviously complex. Some universities have actual owners: globally, about two-thirds of higher-education institutions are technically private, through there is some dispute how to count institutions which are not state-owned but accept state money as operating grants (in Canada, this would include McGill). Most analyses make a distinction between for-profit and not-for-profit institutions, and that is a useful distinction in some respects: for-profits are never particularly reputable, whereas in
Recently, I noticed that Statistics Canada has data on the Canadian professoriate dating back to 1970-71. I don’t know if this is a recent addition to the free data scheme or if it’s been there all along and I have never noticed it, but it’s certainly worth a peek. Figure 1 is the simple picture, just total numbers. It’s a pretty simple story: long-term, Canadian higher education has expanded by about 460 full-time academics per year every year since 1970.
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