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Category: Policy

The State is not Entrepreneurial

If you’re interested in innovation policy, and haven’t spent time under a rock for the last couple of years, you’ve probably heard of Mariana Mazzucato.  She’s the professor economics at the University of Sussex who wrote The Entrepreneurial State, which is rapidly becoming the source of an enormous number of errors as far as science and economic policy are concerned. Mazzucato’s work got a fair bit of publicity when it was released for pointing out that a lot of private sector

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April 23, 2015 1 Comment

Spring 2015 Reading List

Some notes on books recently read: University Leadership and Public Policy in the Twenty-First Century, by Peter MacKinnon.  I really wanted to like this book before I started it.  Since I started working in this field, few university Presidents have had such a profound positive effect on their institution as Peter McKinnon did at the University of Saskatchewan.  And how can you not love someone who says stuff like: “weak academic departments tend to perpetuate themselves because of their reluctance to

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April 17, 2015 No Comments

Australian Deregulation (Again) and the Future of Tuition Fees

So deregulation in Australia now looks to be dead and buried.  But in its death throes, the debate finally coughed-up some interesting ideas about how to pay for higher education.  Here’s the re-cap: Not long after my last article on this subject, the coalition decided to put a second deregulation bill to a vote in the Senate.  The first bill failed by two votes.  The second one, after months of lobbying and arm-twisting, failed by four.  This suggests a couple of

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April 9, 2015 No Comments

Getting Mugged By Your Own Government

Good morning from Maputo, where word has reached me regarding a truly awful piece of government policy emanating from Regina. Page 14 of the provincial budget briefly suggests that something miraculous has occurred in provincial funding policy: This budget provides 1.0 per cent operating increases for universities, affiliated colleges and regional colleges and 2.0 per cent operating increases for technical institutes and federated colleges.  Overall, the 2015-16 Budget includes $661.2 million in post-secondary operating and targeted funding, a reduction of $8.17 million

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March 23, 2015 No Comments

Free Election Manifesto Advice

OK, federal political parties.  I have some election manifesto advice for you.  And given that you’ve all basically accepted Tory budget projections and promised not to raise taxes, it’s perfect.  Completely budget neutral.  Here it is: Do Less. Seriously.  After 15 years of increasingly slapdash, haphazard policy-making in research and student aid, a Do Less agenda is exactly what we need. Go back to 1997: we had three granting councils in Canada.  Then we got the Canadian Foundation for Innovation. 

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February 12, 2015 3 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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