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Category: Administration

Improving Boards of Governors

Improving Boards of Governors Last week, I did a piece on academic Senates and how they could be improved. This got a few of you asking, “what about Boards of Governors”?  Man of the People that I am, I have no choice but to accede.  I should start with the usual caveats about Boards in Canada: not only do they come in a variety of sizes (most have between 15-30 members but there are some outliers), possess a variety of practices with respect

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March 14, 2022 2 Comments

Improving Senates

I thought I would follow-up on Monday’s discussion of Laurentian University’s Senate-busting escapades with another piece on what Senates could – and should – be.  Because while I disagree strongly with what is being proposed there, I think there are some valid critiques to be made of how Senates function in many Canadian universities. Let me first acknowledge that Senate operations vary significantly, and while I am going to make some generalizations that I think are largely true, I am

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March 10, 2022 4 Comments

Those Two New Laurentian Reports

What Laurentian reports are we talking about now? Last summer, after the big round of layoffs at Laurentian, the administration said it wanted to do three big reviews before exiting CCAA protection – one for its real-estate portfolio, one for its overall operations, and one for its governance.  The first one, to my knowledge, has not been released, but the second and third were released last week.  You can see them here. Ok – anything you want to disclose before

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March 7, 2022 3 Comments

Enhancing Quality

We’ve got a provincial election in Ontario in something like 100 days (as if Omicron and Ukraine weren’t depressing enough), so I thought I would put out a policy suggestion with respect to higher education that all parties could follow, if they were so inclined.  Specifically, a suggestion with how to promote quality in universities. To give you a little bit of background, in Ontario “quality assurance” takes one of two forms.  If you are a new organization trying to

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February 24, 2022 2 Comments

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

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.

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