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Category: Research

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

Fundamental Research

“Scientific discovery is not valuable unless it has commercial value” (John McDougall, NRC president, yesterday). “Discovery comes from what scientists think is important, not what industry thinks is important.  Fundamental scientific advancement drives innovation, and that is driven by basic research.” (David Robinson, CAUT Associate Executive Director, yesterday). Some days, the level of discourse in Canadian higher education policy seems to be improving.  Other days, like yesterday, it is full of childish, one-dimensional arguments about the nature of science and

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May 8, 2013 2 Comments

The Leiden Rankings 2013

Though it was passed over in silence here in Canada, the new Leiden university research rankings made a bit of a splash elsewhere, last week.  I gave a brief overview of the Leiden rankings last year.  Based on five years’ worth of Web of Science publication and citation data (2008-2012), it is by some distance the best way to compare institutions’ current research output and performance.  The Leiden rankings have always allowed comparisons along a number of dimensions of impact and

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April 25, 2013 No Comments

An Avalanche of Nonsense

I wasn’t going to write about the ludicrous new higher education paper, released last month by the UK Institute for Public Policy Research, entitled, An Avalanche is Coming; I didn’t think it had enough exposure to warrant it.  But, since the Globe has now seen fit to publish an extract, I can go whole hog. It starts off with bog-standard, “sky-is-falling” stuff: the global economy is a mess (true, but presumably temporary), the cost of higher education is increasing faster than inflation (true since

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April 17, 2013 3 Comments

No to “World-Class” Research in the Humanities

You often hear talk about how Canadian institutions need to do more research.  Better research.  “World-class” research, even.  Research that will prove how smart our professors are, how efficient they are with public resources, and, hence, justify a claim to an even greater share of those resources. In medicine, the biological sciences, and engineering, this call is easy to understand.  Developments in these areas can – with the right environment for commercialization – lead to new products, which, in turn,

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April 5, 2013 11 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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