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Category: Administration

Complements or Substitutes?

One of the fastest ways to get into an argument at a university is to suggest that there is some necessary trade-off between research and teaching.  Really.  The words will hardly be out of our mouth before someone comes charging at you, claiming the opposite.  It’s not an empirical argument or anything, but an article of faith.  Frankly, you wouldn’t want it to be an empirically testable position because if it was, someone might start asking some pretty difficult questions.

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June 1, 2021 3 Comments

What You Have to Believe to Believe the Cromwell Report

You will likely recall the Azarova affair at the University of Toronto, which I first wrote about back here. It has now risen to international prominence because of Masha Gessen’s piece in the New Yorker, the Canadian Association of University Teacher’s (CAUT) censure motion and an increasingly successful boycott U of T campaign.  To summarize: early last August U of T’s law faculty, while hiring a new Executive Director for its International Human Rights Program, began employment negotiations with Dr. Valentina Azarova. She is a)

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May 25, 2021 1 Comment

Vision and Mission

To Hamilton, where McMaster University has released a new vision statement.  To be honest, I am not sure I have ever seen a vision statement quite like it: not only is it detached from any kind of strategic planning exercise I am aware of (from whence vision statements usually spring), but it is also more or less unparalleled as an assault on the English language.  Here it is: “Impact, Ambition and Transformation through Excellence, Inclusion and Community: Advancing Human and

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March 2, 2021 4 Comments

Laurentian Blues (5) – Money & Governance

Good morning all.  Last week, in the course of writing a series on Laurentian University, I ran a feature comparing accumulated annual deficits at various Canadian universities.  I stand by what I wrote in it.  However, it has been drawn to my intention that people may have been overly influenced by the blog title (“who’s next?”) and not enough by the text itself, which was more cautious in drawing conclusions – if this is the case, I regret that.  Also, some

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February 16, 2021 6 Comments

Laurentian Blues (3) – Hillary Redux

OK, before I get to the actual blog here, some updates on Laurentian: 1)      On Friday, Laurentian published its list of creditors.  It listed $184 million in potential debts, plus a couple of hundred small suppliers with amounts listed as “TBD”.  This is presumably the origin of the comment last Monday from an un-named source indicating they opened the books and instead of $100 m in debt it’s closer to $200 m.  But this is somewhat misleading: about $52m is for various

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February 8, 2021 5 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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