The global marketplace has heightened the need for highly skilled personnel worldwide, underscoring the fact that a postsecondary education has almost become a necessary link to innovation and competitiveness. Canada, along with other industrialized nations, has an ageing population and is being challenged to alleviate specialized skill imbalances…

This paper discusses the role of the colleges in applied research in the context of Canada's capability for innovation in a globally competitive arena. The analysis focuses upon issues around an expanded mandate related to applied research. To explore the state of readiness of the college sector, it draws upon the results of a survey distributed…

Mass higher education has taken hold in the developed nations, and a widely held belief exists that higher education is a "right." With massification have emerged two notable trends: an entrepreneurial emphasis fuelled by the revenue-cost squeeze ensuing from reduced and realigned government funding; and a quest for differentiation through "Image…

Survey of 74 Canadian universities suggests prior learning assessment and recognition (PLAR) is gaining legitimacy because of the government/industry agenda to prepare the workforce, growing emphasis on lifelong learning, changing demographics, and students' conviction that learning outside the classroom should be validated. Quality assurance and…

A study to determine whether the same faculty members would be dismissed when faculty staffing decisions were based solely on institutional personnel management constraints as when the decisions were further constrained to preserve disciplinary integrity is described. Two sets of constraints were entered into an integer linear programing model.…

The development and standardization of indicators, including amount of money received, size of teaching staff, and disciplinary characteristics, is described for measuring and ranking the effectiveness of grantsmanship for research projects in 11 Canadian universities. (Author/MSE)

Small Canadian universities are extremely important agents of socioeconomic change for their regions. They focus on excellence in undergraduate education and applied rather than "heavy" research, filling roles the larger urban universities do not care to play in their place. They can be compared to U.S. liberal arts colleges. (MSE)

A budget reduction formula is proposed that relates financial planning to program evaluation, faculty resources, and departmental activity levels. The formula is flexible, can be manipulated to describe each academic unit's intrinsic characteristics, and can redistribute to reflect changing institutional priorities. (Author/MSE)

The University of Montreal's interdisciplinary curriculum policy was studied to (1) determine the range of opportunities given to students to take courses outside their disciplines; (2) assess the students' responsiveness; and (3) measure the ability of departments to attract nonmajor students. Results indicate that over-specialization still…