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Category: Research

Living the Lie in Research Universities

Take the following two thoughts/statements: 1.       “At our institution, research and teaching are inseparable, two sides of the same coin” 2.       “At our institution, if you are a good researcher, you get more money and you get teaching leave to do more research” Both these statements can’t be true.  Which do you think is false? Back in pre-89 Czechoslovakia, Vaclav Havel liked to tell a story about a shopkeeper who displayed a sign saying “workers of the world, unite!”.  The shopkeeper did

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October 9, 2015 3 Comments

The Economic Growth Imperative

A quick note: the OTTSYD will be on brief hiatus next week, as I’ll be in Japan and won’t have regular access to my computer.  Not to worry, though, we’ll pick back up on the 18th. Anyways: I was asked recently what I thought was the most important challenge for post-secondary education in Canada at the moment.  Resisting (barely) the flip answer “money”, I eventually settled on the allied concept of “learning how to promote economic growth and prosperity”. Now,

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May 8, 2015 3 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

Funding Universities’ Research Role

A couple of weeks ago, I wrote a series of pieces looking at the economics of teaching loads; specifically, I was focussed on the relationship between per-student funding and the teaching loads required to make universities self-sustaining.  I had a number of people write to me saying, in effect, “what about research?” Good question. The quick answer is that in provinces with explicit enrolment-driven funding formula (e.g. Ontario, Quebec, Nova Scotia), governments are not in fact paying universities to do

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February 9, 2015 1 Comment

The Case of Southwestern Ontario

Yesterday I talked about ways universities can generate economic growth, and I promised to offer an example from Southwestern Ontario. Southwestern Ontario has been in the news a lot recently due to its deteriorating economy, not least through the efforts of Western professor Mike Moffatt.  More recently, the Globe’s Adam Radwanski penned a feature article on what southwestern Ontario can learn from such economic revivals as has happened in the US rust belt. Radwanski’s argument is a long one, but the bit

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January 30, 2015 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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