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Tag: New Zealand

Better Know a Higher Ed System: New Zealand

We don’t hear much up here about New Zealand higher education, mainly because the country’s tiny, and literally located at the end of the earth.  But that’s a pity, because it’s an interesting system with a lot to like about it. The country’s university system is pretty ordinary: eight universities, three of which were founded in the 19th century, and the rest founded after WWII. All of them are pretty much based on English lines, with just one – Auckland – generally

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September 5, 2014 2 Comments

Too Much Peer Review?

One way in which Canada stands out internationally in higher education is our ultra-reliance on individual peer review as a means of allocating research funding. While peer review is in many ways the “gold standard” of research assessment mechanisms, it has the drawback of being incredibly time-consuming, both for the applicant and for the assessors. What’s the alternative, though? Well, as Paula Stephan points out in her quite excellent book How Economics Shape Science, there are a number of ways that

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September 4, 2012 No Comments

Good Governance and Student Unions

Some interesting news from New Zealand recently, where a bill on Voluntary Student Unionism recently became law. Basically, what this means is that student unions there won’t be able to collect automatic membership dues, the way ours do – rather, they’ll need to raise their money directly through voluntary contributions from students. This isn’t unprecedented – Australia’s Liberal government did the same thing in 2005, and the results weren’t pretty. Why hasn’t such an idea come to Canada? I’ve been

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April 23, 2012 3 Comments

Bibliometrics, Part the First

The shock and horror generated by proposals of teaching-only universities makes it pretty clear that most of Canadian academia thinks that research is important. So important, indeed, that we want every professor to devote 40% of his or her time (under the 40-40-20 rule) to it. Now, that’s a pretty serious commitment. Even before you get to the costs of graduate students, research grants and research infrastructure, 40% of staff time equals $2 billion/year on research. So why do we

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March 23, 2012 1 Comment

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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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