I read a lot of books. My guess is most of you do, too. Here are the best ones on related to higher education which I read in 2016. The year started with a lot of hype about the “4th Industrial Revolution”, a meme propagated by the Davos Crowd and which is meant to get us all in a chin-stroking mood about the future of work (and by extension, education). There was even a book by Davos CEO Klaus Schwab,
The other day I was reading Sydney: The Making of a Public University by Julia Horne and Geoffrey Sherington, when I came across this fantastic idea. Back in the 1850s, the University of Sydney (which was formed at more or less the same time as our own University of Toronto, and on a very similar model) was trying to figure out how to attract quality academic staff from the mother country. The problem of course was how to provide them with
This is the title of a recent-ish book (subtitle: a comparison between British Columbia, Ontario, and Quebec, 1980-2010) edited, and largely written by Don Fisher and Kjell Rubenson of UBC, Teresa Shanahan of York U, and Claude Trottier of Université Laval. Despite a couple of significant faults, it’s well worth a read. The book’s main strengths are the three chapters that act as histories of each of the titular provinces. We haven’t had a really decent history of Canadian higher
… is the name of a new(ish) book by Bruce Smardon of York University, which looks at the history of federal research & development policies over the last half-century. It is a book in equal measures fascinating and infuriating, but given that our recent change of government seems to be a time for re-thinking innovation policies, it’s a timely read if nothing else. Let’s start with the irritating. It’s fairly clear that Smardon is an unreconstructed Marxist (I suppose structuralist is
It’s getting close to that time of year when I need to sign off for the holidays (tomorrow will be the last blog until January 4th). So before then, I thought it would be worth quickly catching up on a few things. Some reports you may have missed. A number of reports have come out recently that I have been meaning to review. Two, I think, are of passing note: i) The Alberta Auditor-general devoted part of his annual report (see pages
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.
