Editor’s note: Western President Amit Chakma penned the following commentary, Own the Experts, for the Oct. 28 edition of the National Post. Read the full commentary at the National Post website.
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By many measures, Canada is falling behind in the highly competitive game of knowledge creation and adoption.
Canadians should be concerned about this slippage as our future prosperity hinges on our ability to build and leverage intellectual capital in support of social and economic progress.
Canada can be a world leader in knowledge creation. To achieve this goal, however, we must first recognize the value in creating world-class universities, and then find the political will and public support to change how our universities are funded.
Some compelling arguments for this change are found in last month’s QS World University Rankings, and in Times Higher Education’s version of a similar annual survey released earlier this month. Both rankings held good news for a few of Canada’s top schools.
In the QS Rankings, for example, Canada placed a total of five schools on the list of the world’s top 100 universities, led by the University of Toronto at 17th overall.
But the QS also signals a trend that universities from other countries are faring better, in greater numbers, than Canadian schools as a whole. …
Continue reading this commentary at the National Post website.