Tag: Ontario

Three Years? Four Years?

There’s likely to be a lot of noise about the relative value of three- and four-year Bachelor’s degree programs over the next few weeks, if this leaked government position paper and this Globe and Mail op-ed are anything to go by. Before everyone gets dug in, though, it would be useful to acknowledge a few basic points. If you’re awarding degrees based on time spent in class, then what makes one given length of time intrinsically “better” than another? Degree

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The Drummond Report

If you’re from Ontario, you’ll have had yesterday penciled into your calendars, like a trip to the dentist, for weeks. If you’re from outside Ontario, you’re likely at least dimly aware that Premier McGuinty punted the matter of long-term fiscal stabilization to Don Drummond, an ex-Ottawa mandarin, so that his ministers could take to the hustings last fall saying everything was under control when in fact this place is broke, broke, broke. Anyway, Drummond released his report yesterday and it’s

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Fibs, Nose-stretchers and Trolls

Can someone please make the Glen Murray v. CFS bunfight stop? It’s making me want to poke my eyes out with knitting needles. To recap, the Ontario Liberals made a stupid election promise about tuition rebates which they first communicated badly and then partially reneged on while pretending they hadn’t. Still, they did something for students, and would like some credit for it. But they are being rebuffed by the Canadian Federation of Students. The Federation is incandescent that the Liberals

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Senior Management Salaries and Titles

A couple of weeks ago we had a fun look at academic salaries. And I know some of you were thinking: “Why pick on profs? What about skyrocketing administrative salaries?” Fair enough – let’s look at what happened to administrative pay in the last decade. To stay consistent with earlier data on professors’ salaries, I use 2001 and 2009 as reference years. This being a free email, I stick to easily-accessible, cost-free data – namely, salary disclosure information from the

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You Couldn’t Make It Up

This email is G-rated, so I can’t use the full range of sexual/scatological imagery needed to describe my true feelings about the Ontario government’s Tuition Rebate announcement last week. I’ll keep it to: I told you so. To recap, the Ontario Liberals made a not-particularly sensible election promise to give a 30% rebate tuition to full-time dependent students. But at least it involved giving some new money to low-income students, even if it came at the cost of providing a

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