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Category: Students

A National Day of Action

Earlier this week  Canadian Federation of Students (CFS) decided to hold a “National Day of Action”, its first since 2012.  Many may find this a bit puzzling: after all, this is a year in which the federal government increased student grants and doubled the number of summer student jobs (also, increased granting council funding and put aside gazillions for infrastructure, though that may matter less to students than to other post-secondary stakeholders).  So what, exactly, is CFS thinking? Well, I don’t have

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June 10, 2016 No Comments

Moral Panics About Kids in Basements

Every once in awhile you see a news story saying something along the lines of “oh my, so many people in their 20s living with their failure to launch, my God, won’t somebody do something” followed usually by some freaking out about housing prices and – if we’re really lucky – something about humanities and working at Starbucks as well.  Like this one from the CBC last week. The excuse for that CBC piece was an American study which noted

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May 31, 2016 1 Comment

Three Unconnected Thoughts on PSE and Aboriginal Peoples

1)      Changing Disciplines In the last five years or so, I’ve seen a real change in the way Aboriginal students are moving through the country’s PSE system.  For a whole number of reasons, aboriginal students were traditionally concentrated either in humanities disciplines like history and sociology, or they were in disciplines which led to careers in social services or direct band employment (child care, police foundations, education, nursing).  STEM and Business fields simply weren’t in the picture.  That’s changed substantially over

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May 27, 2016 3 Comments

Massification Causes Stratification

Once upon a time, higher education was small.  Really small.  Only a very few people could enter it, and the value of a degree was enormous.  Not just in terms of skills/knowledge acquired, or the credential, but also social status.  If you’re a fan of Elena Ferrante’s Neapolitan novels, just look at the leap in social status and life chances that Elena experiences when she makes it to the Scuola Normale in Pisa (which, by the way, I’ve not quite figured out – why

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May 5, 2016 2 Comments

A New Focus for Student Unions

It’s that time of year when student elections are on and occasionally I get asked a question like “what’s the future of student unions?” and “what could student unions be doing better”?  These are good questions. Here’s my answer. For the most part, student union budgets go into providing “services”.  Often, an awful lot of this ends up simply paying for light, heat and maintenance of student union buildings.  Big chunks also go to managing and overseeing the vast number

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March 10, 2016 1 Comment

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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