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Category: Research

The Impact of Impact

Over the past 24-36 months, we’ve seen a real shift towards talking about universities in terms of community benefit/impact rather than in terms of their scientific output.  No more valorization based on silly bibliometrics!  Valorization rather on….well, what exactly? The thing about the whole publish-or-perish thing is that it had created some reasonably fair and equitable standards.  These standards varied from place-to-place, and in some places, they went overboard in being overly-rigid on pure publication metrics, but basically people were

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November 23, 2021 3 Comments

Interpreting the Manifesto Commitments

Morning all.  Today’s the day where I try to sum up and compare what the various parties are promising in different areas and what that likely means for the sector.  For greater detail on individual party platforms for PSE, you may wish to consult the previous analyses: Conservative, NDP, Liberal and Green. Let’s start with the issue of transfers to provinces.  In previous years, but particularly in the two decades following the major cutbacks embedded in the Liberal government’s 1995

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September 16, 2021 No Comments

Complements or Substitutes?

One of the fastest ways to get into an argument at a university is to suggest that there is some necessary trade-off between research and teaching.  Really.  The words will hardly be out of our mouth before someone comes charging at you, claiming the opposite.  It’s not an empirical argument or anything, but an article of faith.  Frankly, you wouldn’t want it to be an empirically testable position because if it was, someone might start asking some pretty difficult questions.

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June 1, 2021 3 Comments

The Biden Re-Set

One of the most amazing things about Joe Biden’s presidency is that we don’t have to hear about it all the time.  For days – nay, weeks – on end, we can go about our business without thinking about what the US Head of State is doing or saying.  It’s brilliant.  But while the vacation is nice, it’s time to start paying attention again because very big things are afoot in DC with respect to higher education. It’s worth surveying

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May 19, 2021 No Comments

Two Short Notes About China

Hi all.  Short blogs for the next couple of days because HESA Towers is hopping and I’m really up against it for time. So just a couple of bite-size pieces today. Tsinghua in Trouble Once upon a time, if you wanted to point to how universities in China were driving economic growth, you’d point to Tsinghua University and specifically Tsinghua Holdings, which was a conglomerate made up of all the spin-off businesses which came out of “China’s MIT.”  Tsinghua Holdings is simply massive

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January 26, 2021 No Comments

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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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