Erika Shaker, the national office director of the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, says yes. The cost of tuition shouldn’t be an entrance fee to a decent life. Most jobs that pay a [...]
University labs and classrooms became participants themselves in a massive natural experiment during the pandemic. COVID-19 remade university life, forcing students and professors to retreat from [...]
The Kenney government proclaimed in fall 2019 that Alberta’s post-secondary institutions were “overly dependent” on government funding—which is an odd thing to say about a public good. Then it [...]
Shelly Wismath, the Dean of the School of Liberal Education at the University of Lethbridge, says yes. The term “liberal arts” comes from the Latin liber, meaning free, and originally [...]
AV: What do you see as the purpose of post-secondary education? It serves two purposes. The first is to create well-educated citizens who are prepared to engage in public discourse and [...]
On a fall afternoon in 2016, Michael Mahon, president and vice-chancellor of the University of Lethbridge, sat in his office and pondered, once again, what to do about Anthony Hall. Hall is a [...]
University of Calgary president Elizabeth Cannon seemed troubled in 2012 at delays in implementing her school’s new collaboration with Enbridge. A year had passed since the energy giant had [...]
It’s Friday at about 8:00 p.m., and Jeremy Paulgaard has just come in from work when he calls. He’s hung up the keys to his new Dodge Mega Cab Diesel and is relaxing at home. Paulgaard, 22, grew [...]
In high school, I avoided trickily spelled words such as “believe.” I also ran on instinct for essay structure and was so alarmed at the thought of dangling participles that I resolutely avoided [...]
Over the coming decades, Alberta’s universities will be lucky to survive in any recognizable form. Over the coming decades, Alberta’s universities will be among the most important contributors to [...]
Hugh Mackenzie
The economist and research associate at the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives says yes.
Free tuition would redress a massive intergenerational inequity created over the past 30 years. In 1990–91, average university tuition in Canada was $1,464; adjusted for inflation, that would be $2,541 in 2019–20. Today the actual average ...
Either way, the three-hour drive between Edmonton and Calgary on the QEII highway has the same itinerary: nice landscape, cows, trees, pumpjack, anti-Ottawa billboard, creeping boredom, leg cramp, Donut Mill raspberry bismarck, cows, fence, pickup truck passing you at 160 km/h, horse, trees, jackknifed semi-trailer in the ditch, pumpjack, cows, full-on boredom ...
Toronto freelance portrait photographer Markian Lozowchuk (disclosure: his mother and I are second cousins) has photographed Justin Trudeau for Toronto Life and Margaret Atwood for Maclean’s, but his editorial shoot of Chrystia Freeland for Toronto Life in 2017, including the cover, was “the most memorable shoot I’ve done.” Even three ...