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Category: Research

How Families Make PSE Choices

Over the last few months at HESA Towers we’ve been doing a lot of interviews of parents of grade 12 students, to help understand what it is that shapes and shifts their perceptions of higher education institutions.  I can’t give away much of the content here (that’s for paying customers), but one issue I do think is worth a mention is what we’re finding about how families make decisions about post-secondary education. The way researchers conceive of decision-making in post-secondary

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September 20, 2017 1 Comment

Fundamental Choices on Fundamental Science

The federal government has been somewhat quiet on the subject of science funding since the release of the Fundamental Science Review (see previous blogs here here and here) back in April.  Within much of the scientific community, which for the most part fell head over heels in love with the Report, this has given cause for concern; personally, I think this is pretty much par for the course, and we aren’t likely to see much in the way of hints about the size of any possible

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August 29, 2017 1 Comment

Welcome Back

Morning all.  Hope you had a good summer.  To welcome you back, let’s take a quick look at state of play in the sector as we start the academic year. In Canadian PSE, I don’t think there’s a whole lot of doubt about where things are headed this year.  Post-Naylor, we’re going to be talking research, research, research.  If you doubt this, take a look at Universities Canada’s recent budget submission.   As always, there are three “asks”; for the first time

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August 28, 2017 No Comments

Making “Applied” Research Great Again

One of the rallying calls of part of the scientific community over the past few years is how under the Harper government there was too much of a focus on “applied” research and not enough of a focus on “pure”/”basic”/”fundamental research.  This call is reaching a fever pitch following the publication of the Naylor Report (which, to its credit, did not get into a basic/applied debate and focussed instead on whether or not the research was “investigator-driven”, which is a

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June 6, 2017 6 Comments

Diversity in Canada Research Chairs

One of the hot topics in Ottawa over the past couple of months is the issue of increasing diversity among researchers.   Top posts in academia are still disproportionately occupied by white dudes, and the federal minister of Science, Kirsty Duncan, would like to change that by threatening institutions with a loss of research funding. There’s no doubt about the nature of the problem.  As in other countries, women and minorities have trouble making it up the career ladder in academia

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May 17, 2017 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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