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Category: Funding and Finances

Fundamental Choices on Fundamental Science

The federal government has been somewhat quiet on the subject of science funding since the release of the Fundamental Science Review (see previous blogs here here and here) back in April.  Within much of the scientific community, which for the most part fell head over heels in love with the Report, this has given cause for concern; personally, I think this is pretty much par for the course, and we aren’t likely to see much in the way of hints about the size of any possible

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August 29, 2017 1 Comment

School’s Out!

This is my last blog of the academic year.  I may post once or twice during the summer, if something big happens or if someone important says something titanically stupid and I need to vent, but otherwise I’ll keep your inboxes unsullied for a couple of months.  For those of you who have trouble drinking your 7AM (EST) coffee without reading this blog, my apologies, but it’s time for batteries to re-charge. When I return on August 28th, it will be in

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June 15, 2017 1 Comment

Who Should Benefit from Skills Training Money?

We seem to be in a period in Canada where money for “skills” is in vogue, mainly because it is seen as a panacea for lots of quite separate problems. At a really high-order level, you’ve got the Innovation ministry in Ottawa pounding the drum on skills because the tech industry says skills are a bottleneck to whatever kind of tech-powered Nirvana the Minister imagines Canada to be headed towards. And then you’ve got the Employment and Social Development Ministry

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June 13, 2017 2 Comments

That Andrew Scheer Free Speech Promise

That Andrew Scheer Free Speech Promise You may recall that a few weeks ago I profiled the higher education/science/youth proposals of the various Conservative Party leadership hopefuls.  You may also recall that the candidate who eventually won the context, Andrew Scheer, had one proposal that distinguished him from the rest of the pack, to wit: In addition, Scheer pledges that “public universities or colleges that do not foster a culture of free speech and inquiry on campus” will “not have support from

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June 8, 2017 2 Comments

Making “Applied” Research Great Again

One of the rallying calls of part of the scientific community over the past few years is how under the Harper government there was too much of a focus on “applied” research and not enough of a focus on “pure”/”basic”/”fundamental research.  This call is reaching a fever pitch following the publication of the Naylor Report (which, to its credit, did not get into a basic/applied debate and focussed instead on whether or not the research was “investigator-driven”, which is a

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June 6, 2017 6 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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