My next postcard will be from somewhere warm, heading out of Dodge on annual leave very shortly. Winter’s been brutal and it will be nice to be away from, among other things, tedious daily missives, signals and dire warnings about impending budget cuts. It’s hard not to be suspicious of all the government posturing around the economy. We are a have province, boom is apparent, the forecast is cheery, but yet we are being braced for an asteroid of a budget. This kind of disparity makes the citizenry cynical.

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Much ado about reforming PhD programs right now. Check out the graph above. This is the most up-to-date data we have in this country. According to an article in this month’s University Affairs, “the proportion of PhD students who successfully complete their degrees within nine years has risen across all disciplines, but completion times remain long and in some fields have even increased.” That’s alarming, and has given rise to some serious refocusing on the value of graduate programs everywhere. There are lots of reasons for the slower completion rates, not the least of which is that there may be nowhere to go in the academy once you actually finish your degree. Concordia University is now rewarding timely doctoral graduates with bonuses; UBC is reviewing its entire program menu to see how best to encourage more timely completion rates; and some universities are considering limiting their PhD intake altogether.

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You couldn’t make this up. This story hit the fan this week:

North Carolina governor proposes funding PSE based on students’ ability to get jobs: North Carolina Governor Pat McCrory told a national radio audience Tuesday that state community colleges and universities should be funded based on how well they do at placing students in the labour market. McCrory said he has instructed his staff to draft legislation “in which we change the basic formula and how education money is given out to our universities and our community colleges, not based on how many butts in seats but how many of those butts can get jobs.” University of North Carolina president Tom Ross says the 16-campus system is already revising its funding formula to include measures relating to student achievement and academic and operational efficiencies. Still, he has reservations about gauging university success solely based on students’ and graduates’ employment rate.
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A short blog—more like a blurb this week. I am about to board for a meeting in Toronto—perishing, Arctic-icy Toronto. Sure, it’s cold here, but it’s practically balmy by comparison. I hate it when Canadians comment on how cold they think it gets here. They don’t know squat about it. We all yak about the weather, complain and get philosophical about it, but it doesn’t mean we know what we are talking about. Now, to our international students who are experiencing winter for the first time my full sympathies. The country in general isn’t fit for human beings, but one can’t tell them that. We spend a lot of energy recruiting them. And it’s hard to tell them this is nothing—try living in Toronto, or Winnipeg!

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Last week was quite literally a white-out. The blizzard was forecast well ahead of time and so there were no surprises, only the extent to which most of us would be without power for a day or so. It’s true, but nothing points out our dependency on electricity like an outage. At first it’s a bit of an adventure, but as the house starts to cool off and the light diminishes and one can’t work or type or tweet or text, it all becomes one giant aggravation. Nothing to do but shudder in the dark and wait for that satisfying and audible surge of electrical energy when the power returns. Civilization—where would we be without it? (more…)

I welcome the new year with excitement over all the plans we have in the School of Graduate Studies, but also with some trepidation over the latest trend in university planning—or should I say prioritizing? Now there’s a word I’d cheerfully chuck into the dustbin of history.

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We will return next year in January 2013 with another blog entry for you to enjoy. In the meantime, happy holidays from the Dean’s blog and thank you for your support in 2012!

Thanks to CoffeeGeek for sharing their photo via flickr and creative commons.

I really like visiting Washington. I started this blog last week when I was in DC for the annual conference of the Council of Graduate Schools. But as is often the case on the road, and especially at conferences, I couldn’t quite finish it in time. I took this snap of the White house on a brisk sunny day. The picture always lies, and so it is the case here. Yes, that really is the White House, and, look, there’s the Washington Monument in the background to the left, but what the image doesn’t show is the incredibly cluttered amalgam of tourists and security people just outside the frame.  I had to stick my hands through the fence to take the shot. The grandstand for the January inauguration of Obama is still being erected, just to the right of me, and there were scores of gawkers and school groups staring through the iron fence, eager to catch a glimpse of the President. There was a spirited sense of well-being in the air. I think people in Washington are so relieved to have Obama, and not the Romney clan, in the White house that you could feel the relief. I sure did. (more…)