Letter from the editor:

elcome to the second issue of Higher Education Perspectives online! Pulling together this issue has taken a lot of hard work. And yet, we have managed to publish five peer-reviewed papers. Following the release of the first issue, HEP received many submissions from all around the world, as well a lot of interest from people wishing to participate in the publishing process. A big thank you goes out to our reviewers, who are invaluable, and who write such amazing reviews that they are like essays in and of themselves. A thank-you also goes out to my fellow doctoral students Francine Menashy and Nancy Smart for helping with the copy-editing, and of course to the faculty members in Higher Education at OISE/UT for the continuing support of this project.

 

y a lucky coincidence, there is a certain sense of symmetry to this issue in that all of the papers relate to each other. For example, Geoffrey Cudmore and Richard Wellen both address issues relating directly to the privatization of higher education in Canada. Cudmore looks at this topic through an historical lens while Wellen applies contemporary forms of sociological theory (i.e. reflexivity) to understand the issue. At the same time, Riyad Shajhahan’s paper looks at the landscape of academic medicine and medical issues, and also, to some degree, expresses concerns regarding the privatization and ‘marketization’ of this part of the academy. Reading all three papers together provides good context for the various dimensions of the privatization of higher education.

 

wa Schumacher’s paper on gender in medical education seems to stand on its own in terms of content since it takes up as its main theme the current forms of gender discrimination and imbalances within the field of academic medicine. However, her article relates well to Shajhahan’s particularly on the level of policy; both papers point to how, at this moment in the time, there is the need for a re-assessment of the structure of academic medicine and its core values.

 

nita Arvast’s paper on the process of curriculum reform at one Canadian community college is a playful and creative spin on an essential, and some might say incredibly political, issue. Arvast highlights how easy it is to reduce incredibly complicated issues, such as curriculum, to their barest and most ‘rational’ of forms and how this principle facilitates buy-in at all different administrative levels. Her paper, the only piece on community colleges, goes well with the other material as it reflects the common concern regarding instrumentalism and economic rationalization in the area of higher education.

 

 hope you enjoy this issue of HEP online. Please feel free to write into HEP with your opinions and comments on the content. Send your comments to mia.quint@utoronto.ca. Also, please submit your research to HEP online. To do so, go to the LOGIN section of the web-site and follow the instructions.

                                                                                                            Sincerely,

Mia Joy Quint

Editor