Category: Universities

Two Ways of Looking at Academic Hiring

One of the endlessly recurring debates in Canadian higher education concerns whether institutions are properly investing in faculty.  It’s never entirely clear what “properly” means – the goalposts move a bit depending on who is talking.  Sometimes it’s about faculty hiring lagging behind student enrolment, sometimes it’s faculty not getting their “share” of money coming into universities.  The comparator varies, but the ratio is always claimed to be moving in the wrong direction.  This blog seeks to examine this claim

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HESA’s AI Observatory: What’s new in higher education (Nov. 17th, 2023)

Spotlight Good afternoon all, Today, we share a series of recommendations on how institutions should respond to AI, and missteps they should avoid. You will also find a publication by editors sharing recommendations on the responsible use of GenAI in scholarly journal publishing. We hope these resources are helpful! Consult our AI Observatory Next Roundtable Meeting Date: Tuesday, November 21st, 2023 Time: 12h00-1h00PM ET Join us next Tuesday, on November 21st, from 12:00PM to 1:00PM ET, for our next AI

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HESA’s AI Observatory: What’s new in higher education (Nov. 10th, 2023)

Spotlight Good afternoon all, In today’s newsletter, you can read about the UK Department of Education’s policy paper on GenAI in education; reflect on how GenAI tools can be used as assistive technologies to help students with disabilities; consult the results of surveys assessing both institutional leaders’ and students’ perspectives on GenAI tools; and discover new ways in which GenAI tools can be used by students, instructors and institutions to improve outcomes. Consult our AI Observatory Next Roundtable Meeting Date:

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Important But Not Worth It? Some Thoughts

Last month, my colleague Andrew Parkin at the Environics Institute published a fascinating little piece entitled Is Post-secondary Education is a Waste of Time?, which looks at Canadians’ evolving views on the worth of higher education (Andrew is a former Director General of the Council of Ministers of Education, Canada, so we can safely infer that this is not an expression of his own feelings) Environics asked two questions: “these days, a young person in Canada can’t expect to get

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HESA’s AI Observatory: What’s new in higher education (Nov. 3rd, 2023)

Spotlight Good afternoon, At last week’s AI Roundtable, we had the pleasure of hearing student perspectives on GenAI. Our panelists shared that they have noticed similar polarized views amongst students as those seen across faculty: while some students remain skeptical about the tools and prefer to stay away from them, others are fully embracing them and have started to experiment with GenAI beyond academic purposes, using these tools to increase efficiency in many facets of their life. One of our

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