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Category: Politics

Bad Arguments for Basic Research

Last week’s announcement that the NRC was “open for business” has, if nothing else, revealed how shockingly weak most of the arguments are in favour of “basic” research. Opponents of the NRC move have basically taken one of two rhetorical tacks.  The first is to present the switch in NRC mandate as the equivalent of the government abandoning basic science.  This is a bit off, frankly, considering that the government spends billions of dollars on SSHRC, NSERC, CIHR, etc.  Even

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May 22, 2013 4 Comments

Feed the Students, Starve the Schools?

Yesterday, I outlined the 2013-14 budget picture for university and college operating transfer funds.  Today, I’m doing something similar for student assistance. It’s a very different picture. In addition to the caveats I mentioned yesterday regarding the challenges of budget-to-budget comparisons, student aid analysis poses its own unique set of challenges.  The main one is that provinces have trouble accurately predicting demand; so if in one year demand soars (or falls), the next year tends to bring a big budget

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May 10, 2013 2 Comments

Attainment Rates 101

Apparently, the new Liberal Leader has decided that one of his touchstone policies will be to raise post-secondary attainment rates in Canada from 50% to 70%.  No details yet on how he plans to achieve this, but that’s not my focus today.  Rather, I’d like to look at the underlying math of how you move an attainment rate. An attainment rate is the percentage of a given population that has completed a certain level of education.  Although Trudeau has never

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April 16, 2013 6 Comments

Discipline, Consistency, and Commitment

Although its release didn’t get much play last week, HEQCO’s report on the results of the Strategic Mandate Agreement process was noteworthy.  Read casually, it’s a formal and polite response to a government request for advice.  But it’s actually better understood as a primal scream – albeit one elegantly rendered in true Embrace-and-Contain style – demanding some grown-up policy-making for a change. The SMA process was initiated back when Glen Murray (remember him?) decided to negotiate Strategic Mandates with each of

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April 8, 2013 No Comments

Understanding Credit Transfer (Part 1)

Every once in awhile, the issue of credit transfer pops up.  Usually, it’s in the context of “learning efficiency” – some politician or deputy minister starts off with, “why can’t my son/daughter/constituent get full credit for previous learning”, and follows that with some diatribe about how universities and colleges “just don’t get it”, etc, etc. Right now, this script is playing out in Alberta, where the Advanced Education Minister is asking institutions to create ten per cent more “seamless learner

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April 2, 2013 1 Comment

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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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