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Category: Institutions

HESA’s AI Observatory: What’s new in higher education (October 4, 2024)

Spotlight Good afternoon all,  About a month ago, the U15 released its guidance on the use of AI in academic teaching and learning (finally, dare I say): Navigating AI in Teaching and Learning: Values, Principles and Leading Practices. While nothing in there is truly groundbreaking – which might make one (me, for starters) wonder why it took them so long, two elements caught my eye.  1) The U15 emphasizes the importance of Building trust, saying “As we learn and gain

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October 4, 2024 No Comments

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
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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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