News from the social sciences and humanities: Graduate students, university funding and academic publishing

Blog
November 1, 2012

Milena Stanoeva Federation for the Humanities and Social Sciences

Last week, Federation president Graham Carr, wrote an op-ed for the Globe and Mail on the importance of preparing graduate students for life outside of university. His recommendations include teaching graduate students professional skills, increasing internationalization and making graduate program requirements more flexible. Read the whole article here.

Le Devoir published an article by Robert Lacroix that presents an interesting take on the issue of the underfunding of Canada’s universities, and specifically the situation in Quebec, where the issue of tuition fees is particularly fraught.

The Chronicle of Higher Education examined a recent study that analyzed over 2 million scholarly articles in the sciences, humanities and social sciences from the past 200 years to determine how women fare when it comes to academic publishing. The study found that there is a gap between women’s participation in academia and the percentage of authors who are female, although the situation does seem to be improving. The researchers also found that results varied depending on the academic field and subfield.

MacLeans On Campus featured a rebuttal to Margaret Wente’s recent column criticising the higher education system. Emmett Macfarlane’s rebuttal offers a detailed insider-look into the way Canadian universities function and what academics do.