Skills not Research
Alex Usher,
Higher Education Strategy Associates,
Dec 04, 2018
This article is based on a report written for Canada's ISED (we don't know who wrote it, nor how well it was read or received by government officials) on 'The Scale-Up Gap" report on building 10 $1-billion companies in 10 years'. Here's the takeaway (as summarized by Alex Usher): "The point here is simple: if Canadian universities want to contribute to economic growth, they need to start actually paying attention to how their curriculum and pedagogy is improving skills. That's the play. Not research." That would be pretty foolish advice to take. Not because curriculum and pedagogy are unimportant (though they're a lot less important than the business writers seem to think). But because at a certain point, curriculum and pedagogy and research are inseparable. I mean, where do they think this stuff that colleges and universities teach comes from? How do we even know that there's a mismatch? Knowledge doesn't spring forth fully formed from the head of Zeus. We make it. And if we stop making it, all hope for all the rest of it - jobs, industry, prosperity, eduction - is lost.
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