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Category: Universities

Universities and Employment: Whose Job is it, Anyway?

Not surprisingly, a few of our readers have been pushing back on the series this week. Mainly, they’re skeptical that universities, in fact, have any responsibility where is employment is concerned. One line of argument is that students, themselves, are not in fact that concerned with employment. Exhibit #1 for this view is usually the well-known factoid that although 80% of students say they are at university to improve their employment prospects, a similar percentage say they are there because

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May 29, 2012 2 Comments

Measuring Graduate Quality

A few months ago, I was in a discussion with a number of colleagues about how one should go about measuring how well universities and colleges prepare students for the labour market. It’s a tough question to answer. Employment rates aren’t helpful because those move with the economic cycle (and in places like Alberta with tight labour markets, low unemployment might be more of a sign of desperation for warm bodies than it is of educational quality). Employer satisfaction surveys

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May 24, 2012 No Comments

A Duty Ignored

One of the reasons universities have had such success in attracting students over the years is the promise they hold for better employment. Over 80% of students say that “getting a better job” is a main reason for going to university. It’s not the only reason they go, of course; most have some kind of intellectual interest in the subjects they study. But the promise of good job outcomes is pretty central to the appeal of a university. So why

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May 1, 2012 14 Comments

On Being on Strike

What does it mean to be a student on strike? Recently, Concordia University announced that its board had settled on Ryerson provost Alan Shepard as its choice for president. Shepard, who’s had a very successful tenure at Ryerson, was unanimously recommended by a search committee that included student leaders. The prospective new president had hoped to engage in a public discussion with the university community prior to the formal selection taking place; unfortunately, the event was derailed by a handful

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April 30, 2012 No Comments

New Economies, New University

Yesterday, we looked at how the economy was being increasingly divided into a successful, productive globally-traded goods sector, and a more sheltered mostly public-service focused sector. I also noted how certain parts of the university such as engineering, computer science, biomedicine, and finance/management have tended to adopt the views of people involved in the first group of industries, while arts, education, social work, etc., align with the second. This matters because, increasingly, governments are getting concerned about productivity. Due to

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April 27, 2012 No 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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