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Category: Teaching & Learning

Shite Gifts for Academics

So, now that Hallowe’en is over, you need to start thinking about Christmas. Wondering what to get an academic friend? Check out the facebook app Shite Gifts for Academics, where you’re sure to find something worth giving. Ok, not really. It’s one of those meant-to-be-funny-but-actually-kind-of-annoying facebook sites where you can “send” something to someone. With a click of a button, you can give a friend one of 212 presents such as “two big male egos in a departmental meeting,” “second

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November 7, 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

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

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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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