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Category: History Lesson

The Inter-Generational Equity Thing

I see that one of my favourite student groups, the Ontario Undergraduate Student Association (OUSA), has come out in favour of a tuition freeze.  Fair enough; not many students endorse fee increases, after all.  But the stated rationale for wanting one is a bit disappointing – mixing, as it does, poor historical analysis with poor generational politics. Here’s their thinking: In 1980, student contributions to university operating budgets in Ontario, which include tuition and fees, were only 18 per cent. In 2014, accounting

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January 20, 2016 2 Comments

The Allure of the (G)Olden Days

Among the many things that drive me completely crazy about discourse in higher education is the mythologizing about “the olden days”.  You know, before “neoliberalism” came along, and research was non-instrumental, people “valued knowledge for its own sake”, classes were tiny, and managers were things that happened to other people. Whenever I hear this kind of thinking, part of me wants to say “and when was this again?” But that’s a bit flip: there is some truth to each of these claims of

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January 19, 2016 5 Comments

The Higher Education of Heads of Government

To follow up on yesterday’s musings about the educational history of Canadian Prime Ministers: I think you can tell something about a country’s social structure just by looking at the clustering of leaders’ educational backgrounds. In this exercise, I look at the records for Canadian, British, Australian, Japanese, and New Zealand Prime Ministers, German Chancellors, and French and American Presidents.  I would have included Italy but politicians’ Wikipedia bios are weirdly silent on education (even in the Italian versions).  I

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December 1, 2015 1 Comment

Canadian PMs’ Higher Education Experiences

For giggles the other night, I started looking up the educational backgrounds of various countries’ heads of government.  I’ll do the other countries tomorrow; today, I thought I’d start with Canada.  Let’s do it by the numbers. One: The number of Canadian PMs who have held PhDs.  It was McKenzie King, who earned a PhD from Harvard for his dissertation on “Oriental Immigration to Canada”. He was against it: “Canada should remain a country for the white man”, he wrote with

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November 30, 2015 5 Comments

The Nature of Universities: Multicultural Edition

I find myself increasingly annoyed with particular a line of rhetoric that academics sometimes use when they want to make a point.  “The university is not a corporation”, they say, “it is a community of scholars dedicated to the truth – if it is not that it is nothing.” You know, the Steffan Collini-types. Two things here.  First, a modern university actually is demonstrably a corporation, which is indeed a very good thing for everyone who likes to get a

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November 23, 2015 1 Comment

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