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Category: Policy

CARPA vs Tekes/IIA.

As noted back in our budget commentary, the Government of Canada seems to have abandoned the idea of a Canadian Advanced Research Projects Agency (CARPA – see here, here and here for previous takes on this) in favour of a yet-to-be-named innovation-and-investment agency said to be based on the Finnish agency Tekes and the Israel Innovation Authority.   A number of people have asked me to explain what the difference is between the two.  As always, I am here to oblige:

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April 12, 2022 No Comments

Budget 2023

Obviously, it’s ridiculously early to start thinking about next year’s budget, but there are several things happening between now and next spring which could end up making Budget 2023 a pretty critical one for post-secondary education in Canada.  Here’s my thinking: –          2022-23 marks the final year of the Budget 2018 research funding package – that is, the response to the Naylor Report on fundamental research.  For the past five years, the sector has been living off the planned increases which were baked into the

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April 11, 2022 No Comments

The Evolution of Micro-credentials and Short Courses

It has been about a year since I last took a look at micro-credentials and I want discuss how I see things evolving in this space. The most important thing to note is that there remains a massive disconnect between those people who think micro-credentials are building blocks towards credentials – that is, that they should be courses or groups of courses which are both independently coherent and can build towards larger “macro-credentials” like a Bachelor’s or Master’s Degree, and

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February 15, 2022 6 Comments

Middle Country Problems, Big Country Solutions

Only three countries have ever sent spacecraft to the Moon, and only one has ever had set humans afoot on it.  “Moonshots”, by definition, are things for big countries with big budgets. So why in the hell do so many folks now want to talk about Canada engaging in “moonshots”?  It’s a fundamental misunderstanding of how countries like Canada can best engage in innovation, science and technology: an importation of big country ideas into a context of a smaller country

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January 25, 2022 1 Comment

Experimental Evidence on Student Assistance

One of the things I am proudest of in my career is the role I played – almost 20 years ago when I was at the Canada Millennium Scholarship Foundation – in trying to start a tradition of evidence-based research in Canadian higher education.  And by evidence-based, I don’t just mean creating better statistical bases to describe systemic inputs and outputs, I mean actual experimental evidence regarding how certain treatments/policies work. For those of you not up on the concept

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November 9, 2021 2 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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