With UBC, Toronto solid top 20 schools nowadays, Western, Queens, SFU safely among top 50-100 and Ryerson, York, McGill getting more attention. I think you can safely bet that Canada will be an academic economic powerhouse within the next decade.
Canadian schools are getting stronger!
-
Lol. Toronto candidates tanked the market this year. Top 10? Gimme a break.
Where did they end up? UBC Sauder (2), Calgary, McGill, Bank of Canada, Analysis Group.
How is the rest of cohort doing? Any placements outside of Canada?Central European University, IMF
-
With UBC, Toronto solid top 20 schools nowadays, Western, Queens, SFU safely among top 50-100 and Ryerson, York, McGill getting more attention. I think you can safely bet that Canada will be an academic economic powerhouse within the next decade.
I seem to be one of the few people posting here who like working in Canada. I am worried, however. If anything, I think that the Canadian universities are on a downward trajectory, and I am afraid that they will have a hard time keeping their standing and reputation. It is already quite surprising how good UBC and UofT are, given their limited resources. But things don't look good.
Each of the 3 universities that have a claim for international fame, UBC, UofT and McGill, have their own problems. UBC has a huge problem with cost of living. The university has neither the resources nor any plan to counter this problem. Retention and senior hiring will become more and more difficult. UofT also has issues with cost of living and is affected by the looming Ontario budget crisis. McGill is in Quebec, where there is about zero willingness to keep their universities competitive internationally.
Most worrisome however is the recent left-turn of the Liberal government. SSHRC, the most important source of funding for the social sciences and humanities, now has an explicit policy of forcing through increasing "diversity" at universities. This is a direct political involvement in the allocation of funds. The goal is not anymore to promote the best science, but rather to satisfy some goals of "promoting social justice", whatever this means.
How do you increase "diversity"? In the short-run it will be hard to make this work by changing the gender-/ethnic composition within subject. Hence, the goal needs to be reached by changing the composition of subjects being funded. At least in relative terms, this means funding will go to subjects in fields that have high rates of "diversity" as defined by the Liberal government. Expect a huge increase of funding in gender studies, cultural anthropology and native studies. These are hardly the fields where good social science is done. The average quality of research coming out of Canadian universities will decrease.
And who can now guarantee that 5 years down the road the government will not make such demands even stricter, for example by stating that "it won't allocate funds anymore to research that promotes or supports the hegemony of capitalist oppression" or something like that. At this point I don't find this totally implausible anymore, to be honest.
-
They have some explicit items for Canadian Chairs that if you don't meet some diversity requirements in Chairs it will be taken from your school.
Most worrisome however is the recent left-turn of the Liberal government. SSHRC, the most important source of funding for the social sciences and humanities, now has an explicit policy of forcing through increasing "diversity" at universities. This is a direct political involvement in the allocation of funds. The goal is not anymore to promote the best science, but rather to satisfy some goals of "promoting social justice", whatever this means.
How do you increase "diversity"? In the short-run it will be hard to make this work by changing the gender-/ethnic composition within subject. Hence, the goal needs to be reached by changing the composition of subjects being funded. At least in relative terms, this means funding will go to subjects in fields that have high rates of "diversity" as defined by the Liberal government. Expect a huge increase of funding in gender studies, cultural anthropology and native studies. These are hardly the fields where good social science is done. The average quality of research coming out of Canadian universities will decrease.
And who can now guarantee that 5 years down the road the government will not make such demands even stricter, for example by stating that "it won't allocate funds anymore to research that promotes or supports the hegemony of capitalist oppression" or something like that. At this point I don't find this totally implausible anymore, to be honest.