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Category: Research

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 2 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

Paying it Forward in Tech Transfer

An interesting item from my hometown, last week: the University of Manitoba is starting to license technology for free. I exaggerate slightly.  What they appear to be doing is issuing technology, licensed for a percentage of the future net revenue, rather than for an up-front fee; the cost only kicks-in once the company starts making money.  U of M describes this arrangement as unique; but while this specific legal arrangement may be so, it’s actually part of a broader and

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February 7, 2013 No Comments

Can’t Get No Satisfaction (Data)

Many of you will have heard by now that the Globe and Mail has decided not to continue its annual student survey, which we at HESA ran for the last three years.  The newspaper will continue publishing the annual Canadian University Report, but will now do so without any quantitative ratings. Some institutions will probably greet this news with a yawn, but for a number of others, the development represents a real blow.  There were a number of institutions who based a large

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January 17, 2013 No Comments

Research Rankings Reloaded

You’ll recall that a couple of months ago we released a set of research rankings; you may also remember that complaints were raised about a couple of issues in our methodology. Specifically, critics argued was that by including all permanent faculty we had drawn the net too wide, and that we should have excluded part-timers. Well, we’ve now re-done the analysis, and are releasing them today as an annex to our original publication for all to see. Two key things to highlight about

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October 26, 2012 No 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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