A recent study by the Higher Education Quality Council of Ontario paints a favourable picture of job prospects for PhD grads.

All indicators suggest biography is as popular in the 21st as in the late 19th century. No one is sure why, but students of the history and politics of univer­sities are grateful, since bios of professors and presidents are not just about university teachers and students, but about the aims of higher education as well.

More than four decades ago at Montreal’s Sir George Williams University, a protest against the administration’s handling of a racial discrimination complaint prompted one of the biggest campus occupations in Canadian history.

A BBC interviewer once asked Stuart Hall, the celebrated Jamaican cultural theorist, about his time as a Rhodes scholar at the University of Oxford in the early 1950s. Had it lived up to his expectations? Had it looked the way that it was supposed to look? Hall said that it had looked fine, but it hadn’t felt the way that it was supposed to.

One of the most heartening outcomes of the recent federal election was the fact that Canadian voters for the most part rejected the overt racism and xenophobia of “dog-whistle” politics. Rather less heartening, however, was the realization that so many of our government leaders did initially believe that race-baiting strategies could actually work for them.

Malinda Smith has had her fill of well-meaning policies and symbolic gestures. If universities really believe in equity, they should stop talking about it and do something to make it happen, the University of Alberta political scientist says.

Since the arrival of British multinational Pearson PLC, the world’s largest education company, branded low-cost private schools have been springing up all over the country, depleting the public school system of staff, students and resources.

An independent investigation into the handling of disputes involving three professors of medicine at Dalhousie University is calling for a fundamental reform of the relationship between the university and the provincial health authority.

Rani Neutill, a feminist scholar and sexual assault survivor advocate, says trigger warnings are useful in support work and in online discussion groups, but they have no place in the academic setting.

Three months away from a spring election, the Manitoba government announced in January that it would boost spending for colleges and universities by $27.9 million. That’s a four per cent increase, bringing the total budget to $710.8 million.

Hobbled by “civility codes” and eroded by corporatization, academic freedom has had a rough ride these last few years on university and college campuses, and 2015 was no exception. Does this ideal that’s so vital to the profession have a future?

Several universities and colleges have outsourced their IT systems to cloud-based services like Google and Microsoft 365. For staff and students, this means their email, records, and data are moved from a local on-campus server to be processed and stored on a remote server that is often located outside of Canada.

Universities and colleges today face a crisis of bad governance. The proliferation of scandals, secrecy and bureaucratic busywork; replacement of collegial decision making with autocratic top-down managerialism; ludicrously exaggerated administrative salaries at the top, while front-line educators are reduced to starvation wages and precarity — all point to the same conclusion.

Scientists and academic researchers from across the country applauded when the new Liberal government announced it would restore the mandatory long-form census. The decision to fix the census was the right thing to do, experts say, but a lot more needs to be done.

Science was the big winner in the 2015 federal election, and a victory for CAUT and Canada’s academic staff associations that mobilized to ensure it was a ballot box question.

Experts are telling us to expect more water shortages and extreme weather conditions caused by climate change. As droughts, floods, river flow shortages, ground-water quality issues, and aquifer degradation become more common in Canada, what can we do to manage water use and protect Canada’s watersheds?

Two renowned professors were honoured with prestigious awards Nov. 28 during CAUT’s biannual Council meeting. University of Alberta political science professor Malinda Smith received CAUT’s Equity Award and Rolland Gaudet was presented with CAUT’s Donald C. Savage Award.

As world leaders and scientists convened this month for the United Nations climate change conference in Paris, Canadian post-secondary institutions were signaling their plans to do more for environmental protection and adaptations to reduce their emissions.

Conflicts of interest generally refer to circumstances where an individual may not act fairly because they, their family, or personal friends and acquaintances stand to benefit materially from the outcome of a decision over which the person has influence.

Elections of new federal governments do not always inspire celebration in the Canadian academic community. But then again, elections rarely result in major reversals that directly respond to the concerns of academic workers. Only time will tell whether, and to what extent, the 42nd Canadian Parliament follows through with promises.