It’s been awhile since we’ve taken a policy tour out west, but it’s time I think to take a look at what’s going on in Alberta, where the NDP government is past its midpoint and starting to work towards an election in 2019. One day, someone is going to write a fantastic political book about the Alberta NDP. This is a party that went from (essentially) nothing to government in the space of a few crazy weeks in 2015. They
Let’s do another blog on this topic because everyone loves talking executive compensation. Yesterday we looked at Presidential pay in international comparison and saw that Canadian university Presidents have fairly low pay compared to equivalents in other English-speaking countries. But, one might argue, that’s the wrong metric. Maybe the real problem isn’t high pay so much as a relatively quick rise in pay over the past few years. That’s a fair argument. But let’s see what the data says. My data source
Over the summer, the revelation that the University of Alberta paid Indira Samarasekera two full years of administrative leave at over $550,000 per year after the conclusion her ten-year (two-term) Presidency caused a series of snit-fits, the most notable one being this one from Paige MacPherson, the Alberta Director of the Canadian Taxpayers Federation. As I’ve noted before (here and here), Canadian university Presidents are not that well paid, at least by the standards of other Anglosphere universities. Paul Kniest, of Australia’s National Tertiary
Last Tuesday, federal Finance Minister Bill Morneau set the date for the federal budget for next Wednesday (March 22) and naturally people are wondering: what goodies are in store? Without being privy to any inside information, here’s my take on where we are going. At the press conference announcing the budget date, Minister Morneau dropped some important hints. The biggest one is that, contrary to what had been heavily promoted for the past year, this budget will not be an
I have been having some interesting conversations with folks recently about “overwork” in academia. It is clear to me that a lot of professors are absolutely frazzled. It is also clear to me that on average professors work hard – not necessarily because The Man is standing over them with a whip but because as a rule academics are professional and driven, and hey, status within academia is competitive and lots of people want to keep up with the Joneses.
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.
