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Category: Teaching & Learning

Ducking the Issue

Man, did last week’s Globe editorial on reforming higher education get the bien pensants’ knickers in a knot, or what? Constance Adamson of OCUFA took the predictable “everything would be fine if only there was more money” line. Over at Maclean’s, Todd Pettigrew made a passionate defence of research and teaching being inextricably entwined, largely echoing a piece from the previous week by McGill’s Stephen Saideman, who argued that universities aren’t teaching vs. research but teaching and research. Methinks some

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October 19, 2011 1 Comment

Teaching, Testing, Grading

In the last couple of months, some very interesting memes have started to take shape around the role of the professoriate. Grade inflation – or grade compression as some would have it – is of course quite real. Theories for it vary; there’s the “leave-us-alone-so-we-can-do-research theory,” and also the “professors-are-spineless-in-the-face-of-demanding-students theory.” Regardless of the cause, the agent is clear: professors. They simply haven’t held a consistent standard over time, and that’s a problem. About two months ago, the Chronicle put

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October 14, 2011 1 Comment

Why the “Great Disruption” is Bogus

So apparently Inigral CEO Michael Staton – who by and large is a sensible guy – has been talking up this idea about higher education being about to undergo a “Great Disruption.” Why he thinks this is the case isn’t clear – he spends most of his Inside Higher Ed article explaining why higher education isn’t, contra some of higher education’s weirder critics, in a bubble, but he does think everyone needs to spend a lot of money adapting to

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October 13, 2011 No Comments

Differentiating University Missions (Part Three)

Here’s an important question. Why don’t Canadian governments act as if outputs matter when it comes to funding universities and colleges? There’s nowhere in Canada where the overwhelming majority of operating funding isn’t essentially determined by enrolments (OK, you get goofy exceptions like Nova Scotia where the funding formula is based on what enrolment was in 2003, but apart from that…). But this creates no incentives other than to try increase market share, which essentially is a zero-sum game. It’s

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September 28, 2011 1 Comment

The 160 Student Solution

Here’s an important question. Why do we care about how many classes a professor teaches? Virtually every university collective agreement has some kind of minimum or average or desirable teaching load – 2+3, 2+2, etc. It doesn’t really matter since so many professors are buying their way out of these anyway and going down to one class a term. Regardless, though, the unit of analysis here is the course. This makes absolutely no sense. Universities don’t get paid based on

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September 20, 2011 2 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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