The World of Higher Education Podcast Listen now →

The World of Higher Education Podcast Listen now →

Category: Institutions

A Revolution in Faculty Bargaining?

Earlier this week, I was riffing on how to make good salary comparisons when I came across a faculty union which has been doing just that. The faculty union at the University of Victoria is feeling a bit aggrieved that its members’ pay is lower than at comparable universities.  When I first saw their numbers, I was a bit skeptical: UVic went through a significant generational shift nine or ten years ago, so their age/rank profile might potentially account for some of

Read More »
February 15, 2013 6 Comments

That Conservative White Paper

On Tuesday, the Ontario Conservatives released a “white paper” on Higher Education.  It’s an extraordinary document, by far the most detailed vision for PSE ever released by a Canadian political party.  Everyone in higher education should read it, even if they aren’t likely to enjoy it much. Much of the paper revolves around the notion of reducing the cost of delivery of higher education.  For that reason, it liberally raids the ideas of Ian Clark et. al on teaching faculty, as

Read More »
February 14, 2013 1 Comment

If University Presidents had a Union

It occurred to me while writing that last piece about salary comparisons: what if University Presidents used the same set of arguments about salary that professors do?  What if we set their salaries as a function of what a comparator set of institutions were paying? For this exercise, I have compared the presidential salaries at each of the top eight Canadian institutions in the Shanghai Academic Rankings of World Universities to those at the nearest comparator institutions among public universities

Read More »
February 13, 2013 1 Comment

How to Compare Salaries

One of the things that keeps popping up in labour relations is the salary comparison: a union at one institution says, “we deserve what professors at the University of X get”.  It’s a reasonable tactic, but making useful and accurate comparisons at the institutional level is much harder than it looks, and one needs to be alert to the possibility of cherry-picking comparisons. Academic salaries in Canada are, for the most part, based on three things: rank, years of service,

Read More »
February 12, 2013 1 Comment

The Demand for PSE: Never as Simple as You Think

The New York Times website had a great little graphic the other day about youth unemployment rates in urban China.  It looked like this:  Unemployment in Urban China, 20-24 year-olds               For people who see higher education entirely in terms of “work outcomes”, this kind of chart is deeply perplexing.  If higher education doesn’t pay, why do Chinese students keep lining up for university? There are really two sets of answers. First, one shouldn’t

Read More »
February 11, 2013 2 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.

Subscribe

Search Posts

Search Publications

Social Media

Linkedin Youtube Spotify

Recent Posts

More thoughts on...