[the_ad id=”12709″] Judging by most of my mail bag, yesterday’s piece on the York strike was a hit. So, I thought I would throw in two tidbits which I didn’t really get to yesterday, as well as give my suggestion for a way out of the strike. Tidbit 1: For those of you who don’t know the geography of York: it’s massive. The main Keele campus is over 450 acres. But, in a terrible for management/great for labour act of
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).
When institutions talk about risk management, they primarily mean two things: operational risks (i.e. things which might prevent the institution from going about its usual business, which we’ll deal with tomorrow), and reputational risks. This latter is not generally seen as relating to the actual quality of teaching and research (that has more to do with prestige, which we dealt with yesterday); rather, it has to do with “issues management” or worse, “crisis management”. Risks to prestige are slow moving; risks
For the next few days I want to take everyone through universities the way a Board of Governors sees them – or at least, the way a good governing Board should see them (some but not all of it applies to colleges as well; I’ll try to highlight both where possible), and that is through the lens of risk. It is the role of the Board of Governors (again, good ones) to ask the question, over and over, “what could go
If you’re just joining us, on Wednesday I briefly reviewed some of the key aspects of the Minerva model as detailed in the book yesterday’s entry, as detailed in the book Building the Intentional University: Minerva and the Future of Higher Education. Then yesterday, I examined what lessons the Minerva had for the rest of academia in terms of building curricula. Today I want to turn to pedagogy and assessment. Assessment, in particular, is ripe for a deep re-think and overhaul. On the face of
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