Some of my Ottawa elves tell me that government officials – including the PMO – are starting to get frustrated by the lack of good data in higher education. I’m not surprised. Consider: We’re in one of those lull periods, between rounds of the National Graduate Survey (NGS). The last one came out in late-2008 and looked at the experiences of 2005 grads in 2007, and the next one isn’t due out for another year or so. Those who have
Want to know what’s in store for higher education in Ontario? Take a quick look at the platforms of Liberal leadership contenders. Eric Hoskins’s five point “prescription” for a healthy Ontario omits education entirely. Similarly, co-front runner Sandra Pupatello’s platform avoids any and all mention of education. Ditto for Gerard Kennedy (at pixel time, he actually appears not to have a platform of any kind). Kathleen Wynne and Charles Sousa each have similar platform commitments to increasing co-op, experiential learning, etc. In
What lessons can we learn from the current mess in Quebec? I think two stand out – one for students, and one for universities. The lesson for students is this: it’s great that they can mobilize and maintain pressure on government in the ways they have over the past twelve months. But, if you fight a tuition fee hike by telling government that there’s oodles of waste and inefficiency in universities, don’t be surprised if they take you at your
So, the victorious Parti Québécois, who believe so much in education, who spent all spring and summer hand-wringing and moaning about how that mean, mean Jean Charest was just so… so mean because he wouldn’t invest in Quebec’s youth, and whose election was a massive and historic victory because they cancelled those terrible, evil, neo-liberal tuition fee hikes, has just cut subsidies to all universities’ and colleges’ by five percent. Oh, and the cuts aren’t coming next year, they’re coming this year.
If we’re going to get into this international education business seriously, then we need to drop a lot of the pretense and mythologizing that goes on in the field and take a really hard-headed look at what our strengths and weaknesses are. These come into two categories: things we say all the time that aren’t really true, and things which are true but which we are reluctant to say. The alleged “truth” that bothers me the most is the one
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.
