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Category: Institutions

The York Strike

Back on March 5, CUPE local 3903, which represents graduate students, contract faculty and graduate assistants at York University, went on strike. A university offer was resoundingly rejected by the union membership in early April.  The union has consistently rejected arbitration. The Liberals dithered about back-to-work legislation until so late in the legislative session that it could easily be blocked by the NDP (which it was, as could easily have been foreseen given the NDP pledge never to use back-to-work legislation). 

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June 6, 2018 2 Comments

Better Know a Higher Ed System: Japan (3)

Japan is one of the world’s most hierarchical societies.  You could have a pretty good argument about whether or not this is an artefact of the Tokugawa bakufu of the 17th century or if it goes back to the Kamakura regime of the 12th – 14th centuries, but either way, it’s been that way a long-time.  It’s in the language, the culture, the politics – pretty much everywhere.  And so, too, in the higher education system. This hierarchy manifests itself in a few ways,

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May 24, 2018 No Comments

Better Know a Higher Ed System: Japan (Part 2)

We all know that Japan is a technological leader, right? An “innovation nation”?  And we all know innovation comes from universities, right?  So Japanese universities must be kind of god-like in their innovation abilities, right?  Right? Well, no, not exactly.  Or not the way Canadian universities think about the term, anyway.  And understanding why this is the case is a helpful way to think about the poverty of Canada’s own innovation thinking. So, let’s start by looking at Gross Expenditures

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May 23, 2018 No Comments

Good Things

I am in a very good mood today, what with tomorrow being the start of a 2-week holiday in Tokyo which includes plenty of sumo (my daughter, the family expert, is predicting Hakuho 白鵬 to win the yūshō in a canter and Tochinoshin 栃ノ心 to win the 10 matches needed for promotion to ōzeki).  I’ll be off blogging next week but back the week after, but before I leave, as I am in such a good mood, I thought I would take an opportunity to get away from my usual

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May 11, 2018 No Comments

Watching the Americans

[the_ad id=”12142″] Yesterday I looked at the situation at Purdue University in Indiana and noted that one of the things permitting the “miracle” of frozen tuition was the significant increase in state appropriations over the last few years.  This made me wonder whether Indiana was an outlier or not, and indeed how states had been performing in the recession’s aftermath. About ten years ago, as the economic crisis was starting to take hold in the United States, things started to turn really

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April 25, 2018 No 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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