The cancellation of Ann Coulter’s speech at the University of Ottawa was not a victory for her opponents, who celebrated shutting her event down last night; it is a victory for the organizers who paid for Coulter’s (non)appearance.
The organizers of Ms. Coulter’s Canadian tour have hit the public relations jackpot: Their tour is the lead [...]
Posted in Education 
Tags: activist, advertising, America, American, american audience, american politics, amount, Ann Coulter, appearance, association, audience, Base, behalf, Book, border, brand, Building, Campus, campus clubs, Canada, canadian opponents, cancellation, CBLPI, circuit, Clare Boothe, clare boothe luce, clare boothe luce policy institute, coin, complaint, conservative activist, conservative movements, controversy, culture, establishment, event, Ezra Levant, fee, Fenians, fortune, front organizations, going, human rights commissions, human rights complaint, impact, institute, jackpot, lead story, level, Luce, luce policy institute, mockery, money, Ms. Coulter, nbsp, night, non, non profit organization, organization, Ottawa, policy, position, racket, side, speaking, Speech, story, tour, u of ottawa, unive, University, university of ottawa, victory, war chest, wing, world, yesterday 
Comments OffAs reported by journalism students at University of King’s College in Halifax, a very small group of students at St. Francis Xavier University have started a Facebook cause to petition their university to change its practice of automatically appointing the Roman Catholic bishop of Antigonish as chancellor of the university.
Posted in Education Tags: abuse, Academy, admittance, Anglican, anglican bishop, Antigonish, appointment, attention, bishop, bishop raymond, Board, Campus, campuses, canadian universities, Canon, Catholic, Catholic-founded, Catholicism, chancellor, chancellorship, child, child pornography, Christian, christian institutions, christian traditions, church, Coats, coats of arms, College, column, condition, cross, defence, diocesan, disappointment, discovery, discussion, embodiment, example, Facebook, Francis, francis xavier university, governance, governance policies, Group, Halifax, head, hierarchy, homage, home, individual, Institution, institutional governance, journalism, journalism students, kind, King, laity, land, laptop, Law, leader, legislation, majority, man, Manitoba, manitoba st, March, McMaster, member, membership, message, mission, mistake, motto, nbsp, news, number, obedience, obsession, office, Official, opportunity, past, person, Place, police, poll, Pope, pornography, position, practice, Presently, problem, process, program, protestant reformation, publication, qualification, Raymond Lahey, record, Reformation, reformer, remnant, resignation, Roman, roman catholic bishop, Rupert, scandal, screening, secular, secular university, September, signature, Silhouette, st francis xavier, st francis xavier university, St. John, story, student, thing, time, titular, track, trial, Unews, Union, University, university colleges, university of manitoba, unscientific poll, virtue, website, world, Xavier Comments Off
Last week, Statistics Canada released the Consumer Price Index for 2009 showing inflation in Canada for last year averaging 1.3 per cent. This report, which very few students (or sometimes parents) pay attention to, has the greatest impact on student fees of any Statistics Canada measure - it is the rate used by most universities to decide ancillary fee increases.
At first glance, the CPI report is great news for students, with the 2009 yearly rate lowest in British Columbia at 0.4 per cent and highest at 3.0 per cent in P.E.I. and New Brunswick , scheduled increases to indexed student fees will be at an all-time low in some parts of the country.
The indexing of fees to CPI is designed to prevent inflation from eating away at the value of student fee contributions to services and avoids constantly holding referendums to increase flat fees due to inflation.
Until now, the system has worked. CPI usually hovers between 2 and 3 per cent.
The lack of increase is not good news for universities as their human resource costs are not indexed to CPI; they are set by collective agreements. The increases in salary and benefits for employees of ancillary-fee funded services average 2 to 3 per cent at most universities.
The anomaly in CPI, caused by the downward pressure of the recession, has caused an imbalance between revenue and expenses.
It is for this reason that ancillary fee-funded university services such as career services and athletics are facing larger deficits. There are only two ways for universities to erase these deficits: cut services or increase fees.
Students will have to choose which “solution” they prefer. They can hold referendums to increase their ancillary fees or accept cutbacks to the services they fund.
The most desirable “solution” is to increase fees by an additional 2 per cent this year and leave the fees indexed to CPI continuing into the future. Hopefully, the economy will rebound and CPI will bounce back to a healthier rate.
The alternative is permanent cuts to ancillary-fee funded services, since future fees will never make up for a shortfall this year.
Posted in Education Tags: alternative, ancillary fees, anomaly, attention, British Columbia, Brunswick, Campus, Canada, career, career services, cent, collective agreements, Consumer, consumer price index, Country, CPI, cpi report, desirable solution, downward pressure, economy, fee, fee increases, first glance, future, glance, great news, human resource, imbalance, impact, increase, Index, indexing, inflation, inflation in canada, lack, low, measure, nbsp, New, new brunswick, news, P.E.I, pressure, Price, rate, reason, Recession, report, resource, resource costs, revenue, salary, shortfall, solution, statistics canada, student, system, two ways, University, Value, week, year Comments OffThe clock is ticking and the question is if anyone at Queen’s Park takes action in the next ten days to prevent a strike at Ontario’s community colleges.
The Ontario Public Service Employees Union, which represents full-time instructors at Ontario’s public colleges, announced a February 11 strike deadline at a news conference today.
Interestingly, the union has moderated its rhetoric and is even willing to accept binding arbitration to prevent a strike. “First and foremost, we want to reach a negotiated settlement,” OPSEU bargaining chair Ted Montgomery said in a news release. “If the Colleges won’t bargain that, we are willing to send all our outstanding issues to binding arbitration. The Colleges, however, must agree.”
The announcement by the union that it is willing to accept binding arbitration – a likely outcome if a strike happens – puts the ball firmly in the court of Ontario’s colleges and their political masters in Premier Dalton McGuinty’s office.
(Colleges do not have the autonomy from government that universities enjoy and the government can issue directives requiring actions by the institutions – see Hassum v. Contestoga College Institute of Technology and Advanced Learning, 2008 CanLII 12838 [ON S.C.])
The question now is what the Premier plans to do. So far, he has offered empty platitudes calling on both sides to reach a negotiated agreement to prevent a strike. This lofty rhetoric is acceptable in most circumstances. This is not one of the those circumstances – the Premier has already poisoned the chalice by implementing flawed anti-labour provisions when his government rewrote the Colleges Collective Bargaining Act.
One of the primary reasons that students are caught in the crossfire was the decision by Ontario’s colleges to use their newfound power in an attempt to bypass the collective bargaining process and impose a contract – power granted to them by Mr. McGuinty’s government.
I e-mailed a spokesperson for John Milloy, Ontario’s Minister of Training, Colleges, and Universities, after the union announced its strike deadline. The response from the government was to send me a link to a statement issued by the Minister on January 13, calling for the two sides to return to the bargaining table.
It is time for the government to do more. The government has two choices: force Ontario’s colleges to accept the union’s very reasonable offer of binding arbitration, or force the two sides back to the table by setting a time and location for them to meet.
The government should also give Ontario’s senior college administrators a little more incentive to negotiate. The Minister should send a directive informing all college administrators making more than $150,000 a year – and there are a lot of them – that their pay will be cut off in the event of a strike.
I’m willing to bet the threat of a strike actually hurting them – instead of helping them balance their books – will assist them to act in the best interest of students.
Of course, the government can continue to whistle past the graveyard like it did during the York University strike – after all, that strike didn’t hurt anyone, did it?
[Additional information: Union bargaining chair Ted Montgomery's speaking notes provided to the media at today's news conference are available online.]
[Jim Wilson, Ontario's Official Opposition critic for Colleges and Universities, held a news conference this morning criticizing the government's handling of the labour situation. His remarks are available online: http://tinyurl.com/yb3gm2q.]
Posted in Education Tags: act, act one, action, Advanced, agreement, announcement, anyone, arbitration, attempt, autonomy, balance, ball, bargaining, binding arbitration, Campus, CanLII, chair, chalice, clock, Collective, collective bargaining process, College, Colleges, community, community colleges, Conference, Contestoga, contract, course, court, critic, crossfire, deadline, decision, directive, Employees, event, February, Force, government, graveyard, handling, Hassum, incentive, information, institute, interest, January, Jim Wilson, John Milloy, labour, Learning, link, location, lot, Minister, morning, Mr. McGuinty, nbsp, newfound, newfound power, news, news conference, offer, office, Official, online, Ontario, ontario public service, ontario public service employees union, opposition, OPSEU, outcome, park, pay, platitudes, political masters, Power, Premier Dalton McGuinty, process, Public, public colleges, Queen, question, release, response, rewrote, rhetoric, s park, Service, settlement, situation, speaking, spokesperson, statement, strike, strike deadline, table, technology, Ted Montgomery, threat, time, time instructors, Today, traini, training, Union, University, year, York Comments Off
Colin Mayer, Peter Moores Dean at the University of Oxford’s Saïd Business School, argues in an opinion piece published last year that “business schools are on the cusp of a new dawn which will see their significance and size expand to greater heights.”
He’s right, but not for the reasons stated in his opinion.
Noting that, since “their inception more than 100 years ago, the death of business schools and MBAs has been predicted to be imminent,” Dr. Mayer believes business schools are finally finding their place within the academy. He openly discusses the dirty secret about how business schools are perceived by business as being too academic and by academia as not being academic at all. In short, they have an identity crisis.
Dr. Mayer correctly observes that in their rush to become relevant to business, which often reimburses or subsidizes the high tuition fees of profitable MBA programs, business schools have forgotten the academic nature of being part of the academy. “Business education is not or should not fundamentally be about ‘how to’ manage a business. It is as much about ‘why’ and ‘what’,” Dr. Mayer writes.
Business schools need to be “more in line with what universities traditionally teach,” he proclaims.
Up until this point, he is making a good argument about what a business education should be – more academic than practical training – but doesn’t yet explain why business schools belong within the university.
He uses the management degree as his example degree program. Management skills require “a fundamental understanding of the science, medicine, politics and law,” Dr. Mayer writes. He notes that businesses cannot teach these fundamental skills on their own as those in business do not have the specialization to understand these skills as well as those immersed within the academy.
Management, in other words, is a skill that requires wide-ranging knowledge gathered from several disciplines. But here is where we differ: Nothing in his argument justifies the existence of business schools as standalone faculties with their own faculty and dean.
Business is nothing more than a glorified social science. It is a department masquerading as a faculty.
Most subjects taught in business schools could be better taught by academics housed within the departments of their discipline – merely with a specialization of how the discipline relates to the business world. There is nothing academic (learning to be an accountant is not academic, it is practical and belongs in colleges) taught by business schools that could not be housed within the existing disciplines of social science.
The Saïd Business School dean is correct that business schools are going to continue “to expand to greater heights.” Not because they are actually becoming truly academic – they are not. They will expand only because they are profitable units within the money-hungry modern university.
More on this topic: The Chronicle of Higher Education has an interesting piece about the push to increase the liberal arts content of the undergraduate business degree.
Posted in Education Tags: academia, academic nature, Academy, accountant, argument, Business, business education, business schools, Campus, cannot, chronicle, Colin Mayer, content, crisis, cusp, dawn, Dean, death, degree, Department, dirty secret, discipline, Dr. Mayer, Education, example, existence, faculty, fundamental skills, how to manage a business, identity, inception, iuml, knowledge, Law, line, management, management degree, MBA, mba programs, MBAs, Medicine, medicine politics, moores, nature, nbsp, new dawn, nothing, opinion, Oxford, part, Peter Moores, piece, Place, point, practical training, program, program management skills, push, right, rush, School, science, secret, significance, size, skill, specialization, standalone, topic, training, tuition, tuition fees, undergraduate, understanding, University, university of oxford, world, year Comments Off
RSS Feed
Twitter