Female academics in Canada have made gains, but their progress remains uneven by discipline and rank according to new research. The Council of Canadian Academies (CCA) recently released an assessment of the factors influencing the career paths of women academics at Canadian universities. Part of the story it tells is similar to the one outlined in last year’s Statistics […]
Last week, former COU head Ian Clark published an article in the National Post calling for Ontario to adopt California-style university differentiation. Based on a larger research paper submitted to the Government of Ontario, Clark argues that Californian universities get more teaching and research for public dollars than Ontarian institutions. In a recently published response , Ken Snowdon takes this argument apart (full disclosure: OCUFA did […]
Much has been made recently about the “productivity” of Ontario’s universities. But when it comes to graduation rates – a key indicator of productivity – Ontario leads the United States by a huge margin. In 2010, the Ontario government set a goal of a 70 per cent post-secondary attainment rate (including apprenticeships) amongst Ontarians by 2020. This would mean […]
The latest survey of faculty by the Higher Education Research Institute indicates that stress levels have gone up for full-time faculty members at US universities and four-year colleges. The single most common cause of “some” or “extensive” stress for those at public universities is “institutional budget cuts” – cited by 86 per cent of respondents, as compared […]
The latest education indicators from the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) suggest that Canada ranks third amongst OECD countries in annual expenditures per student in tertiary (college and university) education. These figures include expenditures by governments on direct support to colleges and universities, support for research and development, and financial support to individuals in the […]
As the province, feds, and private sector do less for research and development, universities are being forced to do more – often at the expense of basic operating funds. When per-student public funding falls at our universities, so do R&D expenditures. As we’ve shown over the past few weeks, major players in research and development are […]
Like the federal government and Canadian business, the Ontario government talks a good game about the need to innovate. But when it comes to funding research and development, it also balks at the walk. According to Statistics Canada, and after adjusting for inflation, the Ontario government spent 29 per cent less on R&D in 2010-11 […]
If innovation is the name of the game for improving Canada’s economic prospects, who is paying for the research and development (R&D) that contributes to the effort? Last week we saw that business is losing interest. It seems the next biggest funder, the federal government, is getting out of the business too. Statistics Canada reports that […]
In these difficult economic times, “innovation” seems to have become the mot-de-jour for the private sector; actual investment in innovation, not so much. Statistics Canada estimates that industry expenditures on research and development (R&D) in 2012 will increase by less than one per cent over 2011 levels. If economic forecasts for GDP growth are borne […]
Despite the claims of some observers, Ontario’s professors are teaching as many students as they did a decade ago, and face mounting workload pressure. Claims that faculty members are teaching less – made by a small collection of policy merchants — are based more on anecdote than observation. More to the point, they are misdirected. The […]
An established salary grid that provides for an annual salary increase is budget neutral. This may seem counter-intuitive to claim, but it is a fact. The reason for the difference between intuition and reality is because the amount of money tied up in an established salary grid is constant, and it is only individual positions […]
Four years after the beginning of the financial crisis, restrained public funding and domestic income means American students are looking for ways to reduce their educational spending and increase their in-study income, according to a new poll. Inflation-adjusted tuition and mandatory fees at four-year public universities for in-state, domestic students has risen by nine per […]
It should come as no surprise that, in a recent BMO survey , more post-secondary students identified paying for their education as a greater source of stress than their academic success or job prospects. With Ontario leading the way, average tuition increases in Canada have outstripped inflation and the share of university operating funding coming from the pockets […]
Since 1992, women have made significant gains in PhD enrolment. However, in certain fields, they continue to lag behind men in employment and median salary. The recent Statistics Canada report on the career paths of Canadian doctoral graduates echoes an earlier Statistics Canada release that traced the increasing proportion of doctoral students and graduates who are women. Less than a […]
A recent Statistics Canada report reveals a worrying decline in the number of tenured and tenure-track faculty members at Canada’s universities. According to the study: “The overall proportion of tenured or tenure-track positions for doctorate holders working full-time in Canadian universities decreased by 10 percentage points between 1981 and 2007, decreasing from 79.8% in the 1980/1981 academic year to […]
