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Tag: United States

STEM, Shortages, and the Truth About Doctoral Education

Harvard’s Michael S. Teitelbaum came out with an interesting new book last month called, Falling Behind? Boom, Bust and the Global Race for Scientific Talent.  Though it’s a very US- focused book, it’s worth a read as a corrective to the occasional hysterics that people have in Canada about our alleged STEM crisis. The book starts with a wonderful chapter called “No Shortage of Shortages”, which suggests that the current STEM-shortage panic is the sixth in the US since Sputnik.  He

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June 3, 2014 1 Comment

March Madness

It’s March Madness in the US – the annual NCAA basketball tournament.  And so it’s time to ask the question: what the hell is it with Americans and intercollegiate sport, anyway? To most of the rest of the world, the American college sports industry – by which we mostly mean Men’s Basketball and Football – is flat-out ridiculous.  There are 420,000 student athletes.  Attendance at college football games is 48 million/year.  Total income for college sports is just under $11 billion

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March 24, 2014 4 Comments

Oregon’s “Pay It Forward” Scheme and the ICR vs. Graduate Tax Problem

You may have heard some rumblings from south of the border over the past few months with respect to a program called Pay It Forward (PIF).  The brainchild of a student group called Students for Educational Debt Reform, this idea was picked up by the Oregon assembly last summer; within a few months, over a dozen state governments were examining similar draft legislation. The basics of the program are these: instead of paying tuition, students agree to pay a percentage

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March 17, 2014 1 Comment

The Skills “Crisis”: Why Good People Can’t Get Jobs

There’s a very slim volume out from Wharton Press called, Why Good People Can’t Get Jobs.  It’s by Peter Cappelli, a management professor from the University of Pennsylvania, who adapted the book from a series of articles he wrote for the Wall Street Journal in 2010 and 2011.  Not all of it applies to Canada (it’s a very US-focussed book), but enough of it does that I think it’s worth a read for everyone with an interest in the skills debate. The book

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March 12, 2014 1 Comment

The Listening Tour

There’s a little management technique gaining some traction called the “Listening Tour”.  In the US, over the past eighteen months, new Presidents at Carnegie Mellon and James Madison have used this to inaugurate their terms.  At Princeton, new President (and erstwhile Provost) Chris Eisgruber decided to embark on an entire “Year of Listening”, though why he needs a whole year when he’s been provost for the past nine is unclear.  Here at home, the pioneer of this is new Dalhousie

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January 15, 2014 8 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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