Skyrocketing tuition fees are keeping more and more qualified Canadians away from universities and colleges and are affecting the career choices of those that do go, concluded a national forum held in Ottawa last month.

Queen's adjunct-ones have voted 76 per cent in favour of joining Queen's University Faculty Association as a separate bargaining unit.

According to history professor John Jeffries Martin, "it simply takes more time to research and prepare a manuscript on Thucydides and the Peloponnesian War or the Umayyad dynasty of the early Islamic world than one on Alfred Hitchcock or John Wayne" (Commentary, Bulletin, March 2003).

On Dec. 11, 2002 CAUT wrote to Foreign Affairs Minister Bill Graham raising concerns over the treatment of Canadian citizens caught up in the U.S. National Security Entry-Exit Registration System. NSEERS, which passed into law on Sept. 11, 2002, requires that certain foreign nationals submit to photographing, registration, and a fingerprint check against a national database of known terrorists, prior to being granted transit through, or entry into the U.S. In addition, individuals of these nationalities are required to register and check in periodically while staying in the U.S., as well as register when they leave.

Last November, CAUT issued a statement on possible military intervention in Iraq by the United States and its allies. We expressed our view that Canada should remain committed to a UN-based process in dealing with the regime in Iraq. We expressed our belief that the U.S. or any nation taking military action independent of the UN could lead to catastrophic outcomes. As well, we stated that unilateral military action without the approval of the UN Security Council contravened the UN Charter. We advanced this position from CAUT's perspective as an organization of scholars and academics committed to resolving disputes through reason, knowledge and understanding, and not through violence.

The Canada Research Chairs program is one of the federal government's showcases to reverse the "brain drain" and to attract - according to the prime minister - "the best and the brightest" researchers to Canada. But one of its problems is that it also is a system that reinstates all of the worst aspects of paternalistic favoritism in the university hiring process.

In most cities in the United States and Canada, the local college or university is the largest employer

As a young university administrator, Lloyd Elliott got his first glimpse of how the business and academic communities differ in practice and philosophy when he joined the board of directors of a small New England bank

I became involved in advocacy work on behalf of part-time faculty in 1999 after working as a contract academic at the University of British Columbia for almost a decade. Thus, I was eagerly awaiting the release of Hidden Academics: Contract Faculty in Canadian Universities by Indhu Rajagopal. Although many good books and articles on the plight of sessionals have been published over the years, most are from an American point of view, so word of a book written from a Canadian perspective was welcome news.

Barely 15 years after some perceptive scholars sounded the alarm on the challenges posed by corporate participation in and emerging control of research in academic institutions, Corynne McSherry's book examines how the predicted propertization of academic work is shaking up the professoriate and challenging contemporary norms of intellectual property.

Mount Allison Faculty Association has applied to certify a new bargaining unit of contract academic staff. The union began collecting signatures this spring, and is now waiting for a response from the New Brunswick Industrial Relations Board.

The Simon Fraser Student Society brought together 200 faculty members and students from across Canada in April for a major conference on academic freedom and the public interest.

Full-time and contract academic staff at Augustana University College voted unanimously to certify in a representation vote conducted this month by the Alberta Labour Relations Board.

McMaster University's senate has approved a controversial policy banning faculty members from making reference to their positions at the university if they express opinions that are "unrelated to (their) area of academic and professional expertise."

An experienced group of faculty association grievance officers is ready to take CAUT's Grievance Handling Workshop on the road.

Nova Scotia's record in post-secondary education has dropped it to last place in the latest annual provincial ranking published by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives.

A coalition of community and international development groups has launched a campaign to warn Canadians about the dangers posed by the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) to medicare.