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Category: Academia

Innovations in Engineering Education

Alex Usher and Jonathan McQuarrie Today HESA is releasing the fifth edition of our publication Monitoring Trends in Academic Programs, written by Jonathan McQuarrie.   This issue is a bit of a departure for MTAP.  Unlike previous editions which have focused largely on innovations that occur at the intersections between different fields of study, this one focuses squarely on a single domain of study which is undergoing some serious re-invention; namely, Engineering.  What is happening right now in Engineering education is

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March 30, 2022 No Comments

Breaking the Discipline/Degree Nexus

Just a quick one today because the expanded HESA Towers opened yesterday and there’s been a lot going on.  It’s about an experiment that I wish more institutions would undertake, upon building a new university (it has to be a new university, for reasons which I think will be obvious): that is, to allow the institution to offer degrees on any basis it wishes except that of disciplinarity.  No history degrees.  No physics degrees.  Kill disciplinarity, at least as it

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March 29, 2022 7 Comments

Two Unrelated Thoughts

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

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March 17, 2022 1 Comment

Labour Relations, February 2022

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

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February 17, 2022 6 Comments

The Opposition to Micro-credentials

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

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February 16, 2022 1 Comment
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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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