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Category: Research

Well, That Was Interesting

The Report of the Expert Panel on R&D, that is. It’s an intriguing and well-written piece of work (kudos to Peter Nicholson), at least as much for what it doesn’t say as what it does. There are three things this report does extremely well: i) it explains the mind-boggling number of tiny programs the federal government supports, ii) it graphically shows how the Scientific Research and Experimental Development program massively overshadows all other panels combined and iiI), it amusingly tells

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October 18, 2011 No Comments

The Future of Canadian R&D – Round One

The Mowat Institute showed some canny timing by releasing its paper, Canada’s Innovation Underperformance: Whose Policy Problem Is It?, on the Friday before the federal government’s Research and Development Review Panel reports. It was a real master-class in media management. The report, authored by Tijs Creutzberg, doesn’t break a lot of new ground; in many ways it’s just a lit review, albeit a very nicely-written one. Basically, it argues two things: i) that our government innovation strategies are overly biased

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October 17, 2011 No Comments

Two Memes About Science

The last few weeks have seen the emergence of two very interesting memes about science, both of which have the potential to radically re-shape higher education. The first is from Peter Thiel, a venture capitalist famed for having invested early in Facebook. Yes, he often comes off as a self-promoting jerk, but a recent speech he made on the subject of the slowdown in the development of technology (and the associated National Review article) is very much worth reading. Riffing

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October 11, 2011 No Comments

Differentiating University Missions (Part Five)

Our conference, Stepford Universities? Differentiation of Mission in the New Higher Education Landscape, wrapped up yesterday, and there were a lot of very interesting ideas floating around. To end the week, I’ll just touch on a couple of them. Clearly, part of the problem we have in discussing a touchy issue like this is one of vocabulary. As panelist Ellen Hazelkorn of the Dublin Institute of Technology says, we haven’t got the language to talk about this issue in a

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September 30, 2011 1 Comment

SSHRC and its Mission

There was a great story by the Globe’s James Bradshaw in July on the fate of the $17.5 Million of SSHRC’s budget that was set aside by the Government of Canada for “business-related degrees” in the 2009 federal budget that didn’t get the attention it deserved on account of coming out too close to the Canada Day weekend. Basically, it revolved around Rotman’s Roger Martin’s assertion that the program was an “abject failure” because it went to almost everyone except MBA students.

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September 23, 2011 2 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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