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Category: Politics

The Ontario College Strike

Ontario College Professors, represented by the Ontario Public Sector Employee’s Union (OPSEU) went on strike Monday morning.  A few thoughts on where we are and what might happen: OPSEU’s final settlement offer published on the weekend (available here) is a heck of a long way from what they were proposing a couple of weeks ago.  They’ve given up literally everything on workloads and the (frankly ludicrous) demand for academic Senates at all institutions and some other stuff besides.  From this you can either infer

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October 17, 2017 3 Comments

The Right Way to Argue for Basic Research

The week before last, you may recall, I took issue with the way the country’s illustrious top university presidents (Gerforno, for short) were trying to sell higher education.  Effectively, what they were doing was selling higher education’s research mission by claiming “look, basic research creates jobs” on the basis of a few anecdotes. The feedback I got was mostly “we really like the portmanteau Gerforno but are not necessarily convinced that there’s any other way to argue for basic research

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October 12, 2017 3 Comments

The Unfolding Disaster of the Liberals’ Innovation Policy

This Government, man.  It is something else. Today, the Hon. Navdeep Bains, Minister of Shaking Hands With Tech Executives, is in Halifax to – are you ready for this? – kick off a nationwide tour to announce the shortlist of the Superclusters competition.  Yes, the man has decided that it’s a good use of public money to spend the Parliamentary recess week jetting from one-part of the country to another announcing not the winners of this jumped-up contest but the shortlist. 

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October 10, 2017 2 Comments

Atlantic Blues

One big story from out east that didn’t get a lot of play in the rest of the country was the news that the Nova Scotia government had, over the period 2013-2017, quietly bailed out Acadia University to the tune of $24 million.  This is of course the second time a Nova Scotia government has bailed out this decade: the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design (NSCAD) received about $10 million. This isn’t really a partisan thing: it was an NDP

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October 2, 2017 No Comments

Twenty Years Ago Sunday

Five years ago I wrote the following blog, under the headline “fifteen years ago today”.  I think it’s worth running again (with a couple of minor alterations). On September 24th, 1997, Jean Chrétien rose in the House of Commons to present his reply to the Speech from the Throne. About half-way in, he noted casually that there would likely be a financial surplus that year (a miracle, considering where we’d been in 1995). And he was planning to blow it

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September 22, 2017 2 Comments

One Thought to Start Your Day

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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