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Category: Research

Great Journal Articles of Our Time

Some of you may have been amused recently by some psychological research out of Brock University which suggested that left-wingers were smarter than right-wingers. This one went globally viral in about six minutes, with front-page treatment in the U.S., the U.K. and elsewhere. So, what else might be psychologically determined? How about choice of field of study? Two Princeton scientists, publishing on PLoS One, find the following: From personality to neuropsychiatric disorders, individual differences in brain function are known to

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February 13, 2012 1 Comment

Comparing Support for the Social Sciences and Humanities

After writing about SSHRC a couple of weeks ago one very loyal reader requested that I elaborate on the point that the social sciences and humanities are treated well in Canada compared to other countries. I’m a sucker for loyal readers, so: I’ll say straight off that that comparing national granting council budgets is tricky because there are some significant structural differences in the way research gets funded in different countries (i.e., not all funding goes through granting councils). When

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December 12, 2011 No Comments

Weak Arguments

I am a social scientist. I like the social sciences. I also like the humanities, even if I do find many people’s defense of the humanities to be shrill and weirdly ahistorical. So, naturally, I’m a fan of SSHRC. What I am not a fan of, however, is some of the drivel that passes for advocacy on SSHRC’s behalf. One argument that gets pulled out every once in awhile and which annoys me immensely is the one that says, “Social

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November 28, 2011 1 Comment

Learning from the Airline Industry

Every once in awhile it’s worth looking at other industries to see what you can learn from them and apply it to your own. In the case of higher education, I think it is time to look at airlines. The obvious similarity here has to do with the difficulties both experience in branding. Airlines all deliver essentially the same experience – you get to the airport, go through security, pick a seat on one flying cigar tube and a few hours later

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November 14, 2011 1 Comment

What is Research, Anyway?

As we’ve seen repeatedly over the past few weeks, there’s a constituency out there that wants to see greater differentiation of institutions in terms of research-intensiveness. In the vernacular, this comes across as advocating “teaching institutions” to complement “research institutions,” something which occasionally gets incorporated into government policy as it did in British Columbia vis-à-vis the new universities. This kind of talk, of course, makes much of the professoriate go bananas. And they fire back with good stuff like Stephen

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October 20, 2011 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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