Blog
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Academic Freedom or Politics?
Following on my post the other day I was reading Ben Britton’s post and it got me thinking more about one specific part of the petition about the university being “political”, and that is the question of who gets academic freedom. Now at a lot of universities in Canada full academic freedom, such as that…
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What is Political?
I’m trying to use this blog more as a way to think through things that I disagree with. It’s not good to have an immediate knee jerk reaction to something and to leave it there. I wouldn’t be the person I am today if I had just stayed with my assumptions of the past. So,…
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“A Stark Warning” on Ideological Control of Universities
It’s been a while since I did one of these long replies to an editorial, but this one needs a response. The other week I was reading Peter MacKinnon’s “A stark warning about the state of Canadian academia: Universities are ostracizing monocultures that need reform“ Peter MacKinnon often has interesting things to talk about, and…
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Summer Reading Highlights
One of the things I love about living in Kamloops is the Music in the Park event. It runs for two months and is free concerts every night at one of the major parks in town. Every year since we moved here we’ve spent at least one night a week there (unless we are smoked…
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This is how you get an academic survelence state.
Sometimes great ideas start throwing up red flags very quickly. I love data. Data is my jam. It’s why I’m currently on the Strategic Enrolment Management group at my university and why I’ve been part of a similar group at two previous institutions. Data and assessment are a great way to enable us to make…
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Ohio Micromanages PSE
Ready for a wild ride? https://legiscan.com/OH/text/SB83/id/2745695 Legislation in Ohio has passed the house to micromanage the public post-secondary system. It now goes to the senate. It is being opposed by nearly every post-secondary association and freedom of speech association and is generally a contradictory mess. Don’t believe me? Well here’s the best (worst) bits: Every…
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Youth Unemployment Issues
A reminder that I love StatsCan data (yes, I’m a nerd). Well I was looking at unemployment and labour market participation over the last decades (1990-2022) averaged yearly and broken out by 15-64 and 15-24 groups in both Canada as a whole and just BC. I was hoping to see if BC was an outlier…
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More thoughts on business education
I was thinking the other day about how many post-secondary programs in Business faculties are laid out as easily understood pathways to particular jobs (Management, HR, Finance, Accounting, Supply Chain, etc.). Degrees that have the same name as the future job. Which got me thinking about how business used to be more of an apprenticeship…
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When the opposing protest is the speech
It was interesting to read this article in Inside Higher Ed today: Shouting Down Speakers Who OffendOver the course of a month, students on several college campuses shut down speakers they disagreed with. Why is it so hard to forge a consensus on what protecting free speech really means? https://www.insidehighered.com/news/students/free-speech/2023/04/13/shouting-down-speakers-who-offend The article portrays using crowds…