Steve’s Week in Policy: September 14, 2016

Steve Higham is a policy analyst with Mitacs. On the blog, he’ll frequently share links to interesting innovation policy-related articles, videos, podcasts, or websites. 

A fresh (and overdue) dose of innovation policy, best served with coffee:

On soccer and leadership:

• Christine Sinclair, captain of Team Canada’s 2016 bronze-medal winning soccer team talks about leadership and collaboration.

On education:

• An article in the Chronicle of Higher Education argues that economic arguments about the value of the humanities are missing the point.
• The US Census produced a visually striking chart to track where university grads tend to end up working, based on their major.
• An article in The Walrus paints a pretty grim picture of the challenges that face postdocs who seek tenured positions at Canadian universities. It’s a good reminder of how tough it is to land a permanent position inside academia (and let’s be honest, it’s exactly why it’s a good idea to prepare for potential jobs outside of academia).   
• On the flipside, (and hopefully not surprisingly), a recent study found that a post-secondary education is still a good investment, as graduates of universities and colleges enjoy higher salaries than those who don’t attend. Frustratingly though, there’s still a substantial wage gap between men and women, most notably for those with STEM backgrounds.
• Obviously, the wage gap is a symptom of a wider cultural problem that goes beyond Canada. The Atlantic published an article about women in science, and the harassment that many are subjected to.

On cool, innovative things that happened in history:

• Fifty years ago, NASA took the first-ever photograph of Earth from the Moon.
• Twenty-five years ago, the world’s first web page was launched.

Thanks for reading!

Want to contribute to Steve’s Week in Policy? Send your feedback, ideas, or suggestions to shigham(at)mitacs.ca. 

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