Category: One Thought to Start Your Day

Over the past two days (see Part 1 and Part 2), we have been comparing the autonomy granted to public universities by all ten provinces, along four different dimensions (organizational, financial, staffing and academic), using a methodology originally devised by the European Universities Association (EUA), with a few modifications from me to make this project work in Canada (see the Monday blog for details). Now, it’s time to tie all that together and show how provinces compare to one another

Morning all. This week, I am doing a thing on institutional autonomy in Canada, using the European University Association’s Autonomy Scorecard methodology as a basis to compare institutional autonomy in four dimensions (organizational, financial, staffing, and academic) across Canada – and eventually with Europe as well. Yesterday, I explained the details of the project, the EUA’s methodology and the small variations I introduced to make the project work in Canada, and scored provinces on the dimension of organizational autonomy. Today,

Institutional autonomy is one of those things that is hard to pin down.  First of all, because it’s a multi-dimensional concept – institutions may have more freedom in some areas of action than in others – and, second of all, because it’s hard to come up with practical measurements of autonomy that might allow for standards and comparison. Long-time readers will know, of course, that the European University Association (IMHO, the world’s coolest university club) regularly produces a comparison of