The World of Higher Education Podcast Listen now →

The World of Higher Education Podcast Listen now →

Category: Institutions

Wells, Rowat, Hurtubise

Wells, Rowat, Hurtubise A couple of weeks ago, Paul Wells wrote his first column for University Affairs. It was on the very specific and sore point on campuses these days: namely, what seems to be the Growing Estrangement Between Universities and Society. The point he makes, which I think is mostly correct, is that while at the start of the century Canadians (not just governments but citizens) really did seem to believe that the world ran through universities, that really hasn’t

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October 2, 2024 3 Comments

In Praise of In-Camera Hiring

One perennial skirmish in Canadian higher education is the question of whether or not candidates for senior administration—in particular the presidency—should have to be publicly identified at the shortlist stage and (preferably) make themselves available for public questioning. Specifically what people want is, in the words of the Memorial University Faculty Association (MUNFA), which is currently having such a skirmish as the university forms the search committee to replace Vianne Timmons, is the following: “…the ultimate short-list of candidates should

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September 30, 2024 2 Comments

OECD Education at a Glance 2024, Part 2

Last week, I showed you some of the coolest data from the new edition of the OECD’s Education at a Glance. However, I didn’t do anything on finances because I was not sure about the Canadian numbers (I’m still deeply puzzled by the numbers in a couple of other countries), but thanks to some very helpful folks at StatsCan, I now understand what is going on and it’s just probably quite bad news for Canada. Let’s start with looking at

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September 25, 2024 No Comments

The Workload Conundrum

One of the weirdest things about Canadian academia is how workload is defined. You’ve probably heard somewhere that professorial workload is “40-40-20”, that is, 40% teaching, 40% research, and 20% “service.” But this is not an actual description of anyone’s actual workload, which can vary enormously from year to year, it’s more a kind of general rule of thumb, like the Chinese Communist Party’s adage that Mao was 70% good and 30% bad. It’s meant to be taken seriously but

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September 24, 2024 8 Comments

The Eighth Wonder of the World: Ontario College Finances to 2023-24

Over the summer some of the HESA team went through the financial statements of the 24 Ontario Community Colleges for both 2022-2023 and 2023-24 statements. It’s…well, pretty wild. Ontario colleges were going after international students pretty heavily before COVID. But in the two years since the pandemic mostly subsided, the numbers are crazy. We don’t know exactly how crazy because the Government of Ontario, in an amazing show of either incompetence or gutlessness, is now five months late in releasing

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September 18, 2024 6 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.

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