Category Education
A survey about rubrics
I use rubrics sometimes, and I'm curious to know if other people do as well, and how they feel about them, so here is a survey about rubrics: Rubric Survey I've put a couple of demographic questions on towards the end, but please feel free to skip them. Update: preliminary results over the fold.
Should Canadian professors be paid in US dollars?
A recent study claims that Canadian university professors are – as the Toronto Star put it – "the best-paid in the world". The media reports should be interpreted with caution. The study is restricted to professors at public universities, hence excludes the highest earning academics in the US and, possibly, other countries. "The world" turns out […]
Do economics majors need to learn Excel?
My first job after finishing my undergraduate degree in economics involved using Lotus 1-2-3 – the first "killer app" spreadsheet program – to create graphs. I'd never been taught to use a spreadsheet, but I worked it out. Fast forward a couple of decades. Spreadsheets are ubiquitious in the workplace. When a new research assistant […]
What is a University President Worth?
Along with the Canada geese returning home and the melting snow revealing buds of green growth, another sign of spring in Ontario is the unveiling of the sunshine list – those individuals in the Ontario public sector and broader public sector earning $100,000 or more. Included as always on the 2012 list are university salaries […]
Why is research higher status than teaching?
It is a truth universally acknowledged: within academia, research has higher status than teaching. The question is, why? High status work is generally well paid work, and vice versa. Wages are determined by market forces, so supply and demand is the first place to look for an explanation for the high status of research.
Butterfly wings and meatgrinders
One of the Drummond Report's recommendations for the post-secondary sector is to: Create a comprehensive, enforceable credit recognition system between and among universities and colleges. This is an absolutely essential feature of differentiation [between universities]. Credit recognition could save individual students tens of thousands of dollars in tuition, and give them months or even years of […]
When professors stop being research active
University professors typically divide their time between teaching, research, and administration. In theory, and often in practice, professors' research informs their teaching, and teaching makes people better researchers. Yet, as time goes by, the research ideas come less frequently, it becomes harder and harder to "keep up with the literature", and a certain percentage of […]
Why I don’t recognize your foreign educational credentials
The Canadian immigration literature seems to regard employers with a hint of disapproval. For example, a recent survey talks about "the failure to recognize foreign credentials" as if employers and others are, for some unaccountable reason, not able to recognize a credential when it's staring them in the face. I've just spent the last couple of hours trying to […]
Looking for an Example of Price-Elasticity of Demand?
The application results for UK universities in the wake of a tripling of tuition fees are in and they show a drop in applications. The limit on tuition fees in September 2012 is projected to rise to up to 9,000 pounds per year up from about 3,350 pounds for an increase of about 169 percent. […]
The efficiency case for nepotism
A firm wanting to invest in a worker, to train her and give her valuable skills, runs a risk: what if she leaves, and takes her valuable human capital elsewhere? A firm can induce its employees to stay through deferred compensation. It pays new employees less than their productivity merits, and senior employees more. The […]
Worthwhile Canadian Initiative 
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