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Tag: United States

Basic Research Turns 67

Here’s an interesting little nugget: “basic research,” like the atomic bomb, was born in July 1945. The term did not exist until coined by Vannevar Bush for his work Science: the Endless Frontier, a roadmap for post-war American science policy commissioned by President Roosevelt. Prior to WWII, no distinction was made between “basic” and “applied” science; although some sciences were obviously more theoretical than others, it was widely recognized that science was always “applied,” at least to some degree. After

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August 13, 2012 2 Comments

Getting to Middle Class

Rick Santorum made a jibe the other day about President Obama being a snob “because he wants everyone to go to college.” Coming from a man with three degrees and whose 2006 Senate re-election platform said he wanted every Pennsylvanian to have access to a college education, it came across as less heartfelt anger than as a weird attempt to pander to working-class sentiment. Cynicism aside, it should be granted that college in the United States – well, everywhere really

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February 27, 2012 No Comments

American Round-up

I’ve been spending a lot of time in hotel rooms and airports lately, with not much better to do than sit and surf the web. The consolation is that I’ve come across a number of very interesting small gems from south of the border which are worth a gander: 1. Matt Yglesias had an interesting recent post on how the economics of Arts faculties differ from the economics of STEM faculties. Basically, because graduate students in the sciences are so

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February 7, 2012 1 Comment

Distinct Missions

Why are Canadian universities so scared of acting differently from one another?  Why does no one want a niche? I’m not just talking about their cookie-cutter mission statements here, which seem to involve adding the words “research” and “excellence” to the output of a random word generator. I’m talking about the cookie-cutter ways they go about their daily business. In marketing-speak: they have little or no brand personality. It’s not as though cool niche missions are that hard to dream

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January 25, 2012 No Comments

Comparative Salary Data – Canada vs. U.S.

Yesterday, we looked at trends in Canadian faculty salary data. But how does our compensation stack up again the United States? Here, I take 2009-10 U.S. salary data for professors at four-year institutions from the AAUP’s Report on the Status of the Academic Profession. For Canada, I use the same data as yesterday but add professors in medical fields. I do not adjust for currency since the dollar is roughly at par. The comparison looks like this: Canada vs. U.S.

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January 11, 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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