Government

Career Outcomes study finds that while U of T continues to be Canada’s leading generator of academic talent, an increasing number of PhD graduates are finding success in the private sector

PhD graduates are experiencing growing demand for their knowledge and skills across multiple sectors – further evidence that strategic investments in advanced talent support Canada’s global competitiveness.

A new Career Outcomes study, led by the University of Toronto’s School of Graduate Studies, finds that while U of T continues to be Canada’s leading generator of academic talent, an increasing number of PhD graduates are also finding success in the private sector.

Employers now recognize that universities are both generating new discoveries and training the industry leaders they need, says Joshua Barker, vice-provost, graduate research and education and dean of the School of Graduate Studies.

“What we’re seeing is that U of T is playing a role in bringing advanced researchers, with their specialized knowledge and skills, into the workforce,” says Barker, who recently joined academic, industry, government and other leaders to discuss the study at an event hosted by the Munk School of Global Affairs & Public Policy and U of T’s Government Relations Office – part of the New Frontiers for Policymakers policy discussion series.

“The more pathways there are to move back and forth between university, industry and non-profit, the better it is for a robust, resilient and competitive economy.”

The Career Outcomes study shows that professional paths for U of T’s PhD graduates are expanding, based on a survey of publicly available data on roughly 16,000 alumni over the past two decades.

While the post-secondary sector remains the primary employer for PhD graduates, the study shows a nearly 10-per-cent rise in private sector employment for PhD grads when comparing the 2000-2015 and 2016-2021 cohorts – from 19 per cent to 27 per cent.

The top industries hiring PhD graduates include life sciences, engineering, trades and transportation and health and information technology.

PhD graduates in the physical sciences, meanwhile, were the most likely to find employment in the private sector, amounting to nearly 43 per cent of all alumni as of 2022. Major employers included Google, Intel and Royal Bank of Canada.

At present, only about one per cent of Canadians have a PhD degree. But this number may rise following the federal government’s recent commitment to invest $825 million over the next five years to increase the value and number of scholarships for master’s students, PhD students and post-doctoral fellows.

“The recent investment that the federal government made has a huge impact for us, and I think it will help accelerate some of the trends that we’re seeing,” says Barker, adding that sustained support is necessary to develop the pipeline of advanced research talent to fuel Canada’s innovation ecosystem.

From left to right: Darius Ornston, associate professor at the Munk School of Global Affairs & Public Policy and interim director of research; Ann Meyer, director, bioInnovation Scientist Program at adMare Academy, adMare BioInnovations; Rafal Janik, COO, Xanadu, Joshua Barker, dean of the School of Graduate Studies and vice-provost, graduate research and education (photo by Simona Chiose)

That includes startups such as Toronto-based Xanadu, founded by former U of T post-doc Christian Weedbrook, which is working to build the world’s first photonic-based, fault-tolerant quantum computer.

“We still have a long way to go from a research perspective,” says Rafal Janik, Xanadu’s chief operating officer, who attended the New Frontiers event and talked about why the company recruits PhD graduates. “I think our entire team has post-graduate degrees. I think everybody has some connection to U of T from that space as well.”

The study also finds a notable uptick in private sector employment among PhD graduates in the life sciences, with nine per cent more graduates from 2016-2021 in industry jobs compared to the previous cohort.

The non-profit adMare BioInnovations is playing a role in moving PhD graduates’ research out of the lab so it can be turned into new treatments and therapies.

"The adMare Academy offers programming that enables PhD graduates and others to see the commercial potential in their research and to understand what it takes to translate that research into commercially viable therapeutics,” says Ann Meyer, director of adMare’s BioInnovation Scientist Program.

It’s not only STEM fields where PhD grads are finding private sector employment.

The study shows that nine per cent of humanities graduates worked in the private sector in 2022, with many in this group exploring fields outside academia including media and publishing (15 per cent), arts and culture (35 per cent), education (10 per cent) and banking and finance (seven per cent).

At the same time, the post-secondary employment pattern for social sciences graduates remains steady. More than half are in tenure-track roles at Canadian universities, and a fifth are in teaching-focused positions at universities and colleges.

Overall, 47 per cent of all PhD graduates over the study period were employed in the post-secondary sector.

With about 1,000 PhD graduates a year, U of T trains one in seven of Canada’s doctorate holders and plays a pivotal role in advancing the exchange of ideas that drives Canada’s prosperity and progress.

“U of T is continually replenishing and rejuvenating the workforce across higher education,” Barker says. “These institutions, in turn, train the next generation of undergrad and graduate students who will go out and work across the economy.”

Researchers help youth get involved with Toronto’s net-zero carbon plan

siddiq22 — Thu, 06 Jul 2023 01:16:15 +0000

Researchers help youth get involved with Toronto’s net-zero carbon plan

siddiq22 Wed, 07/05/2023 - 21:16

Cutline

U of T researchers are working on ways to engage youth in the City of Toronto's ambitious plan to drastically reduce carbon emissions (photo by Unsplash)

Alexa Battler

Topic

Our Community

Institutional Strategic Initiatives

Subheadline

A new report co-authored by Laura Tozer, an assistant professor at U of T Scarborough, will guide researchers on a youth engagement approach for the City of Toronto's TransformTO Net Zero Strategy

The City of Toronto plans to reduce city-wide carbon emissions to net zero by 2040, and researchers from the University of Toronto are helping to ensure young people play a key role in reaching its goal.

A new report outlining best practices will guide researchers as they co-design a youth engagement strategy with the city for its TransformTO Net Zero Strategy – one of the most ambitious plans to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in North America.

Researchers will spend the next year working with youth climate activists and youth-led organizations to begin pilot projects and boost existing programming, all while studying which approaches work best and why.

“We’re helping support the change while we're studying the change,” says Laura Tozer, co-author of the report and assistant professor in the department of physical and environmental sciences at U of T Scarborough.

“We have lots of research questions around what young people think a good life would look like in Toronto’s net-zero carbon transition – and how we would get there.”

The Youth Climate Action in Toronto project will also study ways to support young people from historically marginalized communities in overcoming the additional barriers they face, such as stereotypes and a lack of representation in environmental work. Several research questions and initiatives will focus on ways to reach underrepresented demographics and communities, and amplify their voices.

Assistant Professor Laura Tozer's research focuses on energy governance and how urban settings can become sustainable (supplied image)

Researchers plan to support about eight pilot projects so far. For example, Eve Tuck and Fikile Nxumalo, associate and assistant professors respectively at U of T’s Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE), are working with the Tkaronto CIRCLE Lab to run an after-school workshop where Black and Indigenous youth are designing a land education program focused on climate justice.

One initiative led by Michael Classens, associate professor in the School of the Environment in the Faculty of Arts & Science, is examining how youth-led efforts to improve food justice can overlap with climate action, while another project will study methods to spread the word on climate change in ways that address – not exacerbate – the significant impact the climate crisis has on youth mental health.

“We want to fundamentally resource the action that is already being taken,” says Tozer, director of the IMPACT Lab, a research group focused on climate-change policy and action. “This project is really about supporting the way that young people want to do this work.”

Several initiatives are bridging different fields of study – a core aspect of the U of T centre co-funding the project, the Climate Positive Energy Initiative. Many of the centre’s experts – which span scientists, engineers and economists to social scientists and policy researchers – are bringing different research questions and insights to the project.

“It's a very diverse interdisciplinary team coming at this question from a lot of different angles,” Tozer says.

Report highlights opportunities and obstacles to engaging youth

The researchers’ report lays out best practices gleaned from existing research and their own interviews with young climate activists, city employees and youth engagement specialists, which probed what makes young people want to take action – or avoid it.

They found youth are deeply worried about climate change – to the extent that it is harming their mental health – but many are convinced their actions won’t make a difference. Some see climate change as just one of many threats facing the world, some don’t know where to start and others are moored by feelings of frustration and betrayal at older generations.

The report does strike an optimistic tone, highlighting successful programs, workshops and events across North America – many hosted by schools and noted as accessible entry points. Youth climate councils working with municipal governments were found to be powerful outlets, though more difficult to join.

While many youth believe governments should be held accountable in finding solutions to climate change, they often had low levels of trust in the political process. Young climate activists also shared a concern at being seen as a token young person in political spaces – Tozer says unless they see their voices making an impact, they risk further losing trust in governments.

“Young people need to get something out of this engagement – they don't want to just be extracted from,” Tozer says. “They’ll stop engaging if nothing happens, and stop lending their brilliance to what should be done on climate action.”

The report also highlights the importance of community. Young people are effective recruiters, and spaces that are welcoming, fun and community-oriented tend to not just get young people involved, but keep them coming back. The report also highlights how important it is to acknowledge youth as individuals with varying goals, free time and capacities – as one interviewee put it, “We’re not all Greta [Thurnburg].”

“There are differences in which young people are able to take climate action now, or think of it as part of their lives, so taking an equity-based approach is also important,” Tozer says. “Young people hold strategic power when it comes to climate action, and they are capable of great influence.”

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Climate Positive Energy Initiative

COVID-19 poses unprecedented tests for governments, U of T's Michael Sabia writes in Globe and Mail

rahul.kalvapalle — Mon, 23 Mar 2020 18:30:26 +0000

COVID-19 poses unprecedented tests for governments, U of T's Michael Sabia writes in Globe and Mail

rahul.kalvapalle Mon, 03/23/2020 - 14:30

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(photo by Andrés Ignacio Carli/ World Bank)

Topic

Global Lens

Coronavirus

Munk School of Global Affairs & Public Policy

Economy

Global

Government

From protecting the health of citizens to grappling with short-term and long-term damage to the economy, governments around the world face unprecedented challenges in coping with the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic.

That’s according to Michael Sabia, director of the University of Toronto’s Munk School of Global Affairs & Public Policy, who, in an op-ed for t he Globe and Mail, identified three distinct tests that governments face amid the prevailing crisis.

The most fundamental test has to do with protecting citizens from the virus, Sabia writes, noting that the response has varied from country to country. “Here in Canada, we are seeing good co-operation among public-health authorities. Experts are advising political leaders who appear to be listening,” he says.

The second test concerns economic assistance for citizens and small businesses, with Sabia calling on the government to dig deep into its pockets to help Canadians.

“Canada’s ratio of debt to GDP is the best in the Group of Seven,” he says. “We have the firepower. Use it.”

Finally, governments will need to grapple with how to eventually re-start their economies and re-shape them to “secure our future prosperity in what will likely be a changed world.”

Read the op-ed in the Globe and Mail

U of T-founded Creative Destruction Lab receives $25 million from Canadian government

lanthierj — Tue, 09 Oct 2018 18:52:43 +0000

U of T-founded Creative Destruction Lab receives $25 million from Canadian government

lanthierj Tue, 10/09/2018 - 14:52

Cutline

Navdeep Bains, Canada's minister of innovation, science and economic development poses for photographs with Sonia Sennik, the executive director of the Creative Destruction Lab (photo by Eugene Grichko)

Topic

Global Lens

Creative Destruction Lab

Entrepreneneurship

Government

Research & Innovation

Rotman School of Management

Startup

The federal government is investing $25 million in the Creative Destruction Lab, a seed-stage startup program first launched at the University of Toronto.

The investment, announced today at U of T's Rotman School of Management, will spur research and development into science-based startups, attract investment in Canadian companies and encourage more young women to pursue opportunities in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathmatics) fields.

“Creative Destruction Lab's exciting project promises to unleash a new wave of startup innovation across Canada, creating thousands of middle-class jobs and further securing Canada's position as a world leader in the AI field,” said Navdeep Bains, Canada's minister of innovation, science and economic development.

“Our government is proud to make investments that will help turn hundreds of innovative ideas into the good jobs and companies of tomorrow.”

The investment, by the government’s Strategic Innovation Fund, will flow over four years, helping CDL back a number of upcoming initiatives. They include scaling up more than 1,300 science-based startups across the country – a move expected to create up to 22,000 jobs. CDL will also launch a new program aimed at encouraging young women to pursue STEM fields, opening up spots at future CDL sessions for up to 1,500 female high school students.

“This is a tremendous moment,” said Professor Tiff Macklem, who is Rotman's dean. “Thank you Minister Bains, the Government of Canada and everyone that saw the vision and the opportunity of the Creative Destruction Lab.”

Founded in 2012 at Rotman School by Professor Ajay Agrawal, CDL focuses on building science-based companies. Over the years, it has helped grow more than 500 science-based ventures through mentorship and access to entrepreneurs and angel investors who help founders set measurable, focused objectives. CDL itself has also expanded significantly and now operates out of five universities across Canada, as well as New York University.

“First-time founders of science-based companies, while fully committed to the success of their venture and possessing deep knowledge in their technical domain, often lack the business judgment required to prioritize among the almost infinite list of to-dos required to successfully build and scale their business. Our structured and rigorous program helps them with that prioritization process,” said CDL executive director Sonia Sennik. “While we fully leverage market forces to provide prioritization guidance from individuals who themselves have built successfully scaled businesses, the coordination of those market forces requires non-market support.

“That is why we are so grateful to the Government of Canada for supporting our mission that will drive economic impact and create jobs, learning opportunities, and global leadership for deep-tech and science-based companies across Canada.”

Vivek Goel, U of T's vice-president of research and innovation, said CDL itself is an example of a startup that's now scaling globally (photo by Eugene Grichko)

CDL supports ventures that specialize in artificial intelligence, blockchain, cities, energy, health, quantum machine learning and more. Companies that have participated in CDL have created more than $3 billion in equity value to date. Alumni of the program include Thalmic Labs (Waterloo), Atomwise (San Francisco), Deep Genomics (Toronto) and Kyndi (Palo Alto).

Earlier this year, CDL launched a new stream designed for supporting entrepreneurs interested in breaking into space-related markets.

The new investment “will not only help the Creative Destruction Lab continue to do business here in Toronto, but at its sites across the country and around the world,” said Professor Vivek Goel, U of T’s vice-president of research and innovation.

“The Creative Destruction Lab is an example of a startup that is now scaling globally.”

Innovation minister visits StatsCan facility at U of T, emphasizes importance of data-driven research

Christopher.Sorensen — Fri, 28 Jul 2017 21:40:02 +0000

Innovation minister visits StatsCan facility at U of T, emphasizes importance of data-driven research

Christopher.Sorensen Fri, 07/28/2017 - 17:40

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U of T President Meric Gertler and Navdeep Bains, the federal minister of innovation, science and economic development, at Robarts Library on Friday (photo by Geoffrey Vendeville)

Chris Sorensen

Author legacy

Chris Sorensen

Canada wants to go big on Big Data to boost innovation and inform policy-making – and researchers from post-secondary institutions like the University of Toronto will play a key role.

Navdeep Bains, the federal minister of innovation, science and economic development, delivered that message at a roundtable discussion Friday with U of T President Meric Gertler and researchers from U of T and McMaster University.

Bains and Anil Arora, the chief statistician at Statistics Canada, arrived at U of T shortly after Bains delivered a speech at Environics Analytics, a marketing analytics firm, in which he outlined plans to modernize Statistics Canada by finding new ways of collecting and integrating data, as well as sharing it with people and businesses.

The federal government hopes researchers at Canadian universities can use the data to better inform everything from health care to economic policy.

“We see this in the broader context of Big Data and open data,” said Bains. “It's really about how we can solve problems when we're around the cabinet table and we have substantive questions on housing, clean-tech, tourism or Indigenous people, income inequality or health care.”

He added that data-driven decision-making will be critical to transform Canada’s current resource-based economy into a knowledge-based one.

The discussion was held inside U of T’s Research Data Centre, a StatsCan-operated facility on the seventh floor of Robarts Library. The secure facility – users must receive special security clearance, no cellphones or cameras are permitted – makes detailed microdata available to U of T and other researchers on subjects ranging from Canadians’ health to their employment status. It’s part of the Canadian Research Data Centres Network (CRDCN), a network of 16 research data centre clusters located on university campuses across the country.

Also present was Martin Taylor, the executive director of CRDCN.

Among the issues discussed by the roundtable was how to incorporate more data into the CRDCN beyond the typical survey data collected by Statistics Canada, while also being mindful of privacy issues. That includes so-called administrative data from hospitals and licensing bodies, as well as data pertaining to Canadian businesses.

“It’s very exciting to think about how the integration of administrative data, which complements the survey and census data that Statistics Canada produces, will allow us to do amazing things,” said President Gertler.

“Anything we can do to foster that access and lower the barriers to firm-level data is going to be in Canada’s best interest.”

Researchers from U of T and McMaster University meet with CRDCN officials, including (at centre) Executive Director Martin Taylor (photo by Geoffrey Vendeville)

Michael Baker is the academic director of the Toronto Research Data Centre and a professor in U of T’s department of economics. He said other countries are already moving in this direction.

“There’s a recognition Canada needs to step up its game in this area,” said Baker in an interview before the roundtable kicked off. “If the data researchers are using for their research doesn’t exist here, they will go elsewhere.

“They will effectively work on [solving] other countries’ problems.”

Alice Hoe, a candidate for a PhD in sociology at U of T, knows how access to the right data can shed light on important social and economic issues. She estimates she spent more than 1,000 hours in the U of T data centre studying labour and income data. Her research is focused on understanding how new immigrants to Canada fare in the job market – a subject she was drawn to after watching her university-educated parents struggle upon arriving in Canada from Taiwan.

“Basically what I’ve found is immigrants are more likely to be in bad jobs, and once they’re in these bad jobs, they’re more likely to stay in them than Canadians who are born here,” Hoe said in an interview earlier this week. “They are also more likely to fall out of employment.”

Economic underperformance among new Canadians is not a new phenomenon. But the situation appears to be getting worse, according to Hoe. She said the problem is tied to a shift in immigration patterns away from Europe toward Asia, Africa and Latin America, suggesting language issues, racial discrimination and challenges associated with the recognition of foreign education and professional credentials are all playing a role.

However, Hoe said it’s become increasingly difficult to get an accurate picture of how new Canadians are faring in the workplace because the survey she relied upon to do her research – the Survey of Labour and Income Dynamics – was scrapped in 2011 and replaced with one that focuses on income.

“You wouldn’t know whether they have access to health and pension benefits, whether they’re unionized with collective bargaining,” said Hoe.

Alice Hoe is a PhD candidate in sociology at U of T. She's spent over 1,000 hours in U of T's research data centre to determine how new immigrants are faring in the Canadian economy (photo by Chris Sorensen)

Maripier Isabelle is a PhD candidate in U of T’s economics department, a fellow at the Canadian Centre for Health Economics and a junior fellow at Massey College. Her research focuses on the long-term impacts of C-section births on children’s health outcomes, and whether it adds to the costs associated with rising C-section rates in Canada. Her preliminary results suggest there may be a link between C-section births and certain health outcomes, including with children who must regularly take prescription medication for conditions like asthma.

“What I really wanted to accomplish with my research is to inform Canadian public policy,” Isabelle told the roundtable.

Isabelle added that her research would benefit greatly from the addition of administrative health data, which documents a wider variety of health outcomes and doesn’t suffer from the imprecision associated with self-reported survey data.

Hoe and Isabelle were joined by Grant Gibson, a PhD student at McMaster University whose research tries to measure inequality in Canada and whether the methods used to remedy it are working.

The roots of Canada’s network of research data centres can be traced to 1998, when a federal task force recommended university researchers be given access to Statistics Canada’s more detailed microdata files.

The CRDCN receives funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council, the Canada Foundation for Innovation and the Canadian Institutes of Health Research.

Financiers are now controlling public works, much to the public's confusion

ullahnor — Mon, 24 Jul 2017 15:11:23 +0000

Financiers are now controlling public works, much to the public's confusion ullahnor Mon, 07/24/2017 - 11:11

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Ontarians got a taste of privatization in the 1990s, when the Conservative government of Mike Harris handed over the lucrative Highway 407 toll road in a 99-year lease for a fraction of its value (photo by CC BY-NC)

Author legacy

Mariana Valverde

Topic

Subheadline

U of T's Mariana Valverde & The Conversation

In the 1990s the large, nationally owned British Railways was split off into dysfunctionally separate entities and sold off to private owners in a world-famous example of complete privatization.

During the recent British election, polls revealed that most citizens now support the Labour Party’s promise to renationalize the system.

This may not seem very relevant to Canadians, because we never went through wholesale privatization – in part because we never had the wholesale nationalizations that Britain had in the 1950s.

But suddenly these international debates have indeed become relevant to Canada, although the issues here are being obscured by the downright Orwellian terminology used by infrastructure insiders.

In Canada, outright privatization was promoted in the mid-1990s by the neoconservative government of Ontario Premier Mike Harris. But one of the first instances of infrastructure privatization, southern Ontario’s 407 toll highway, proved to be a disaster and so enthusiasm quickly faded.

But while they may have shied away from completely selling off major public works, Canadian governments at all levels have still found ways to go along with the global trend of giving private capital a bigger role in public works.

Not really partnerships

As I’ve learned as an academic researching infrastructure governance, what’s emerged as the main Canadian model goes by the name of “public-private partnerships.” Ontario and British Columbia are its key promoters, though the Ontario government prefers to use the obscure term “Alternative Finance and Procurement,” which does not contain the politically sensitive word “private.”

If George Orwell, that foe of euphemistic government-speak, was still with us, he’d likely point out that “partnership” is a highly misleading term. Major provincial infrastructure projects like hospitals, bridges and transit lines do bring public and private sector “partners” together, but they’re not partnerships.

A legal partnership is a long-term agreement to join forces and share financial risks over time – such as a law firm with partners.

But today’s public-private partnerships are actually arrangements whereby corporations provide financing, engineering, construction and design services for projects chosen by governments and ultimately funded by governments. The construction folks do their work and leave. The lenders stick around to be repaid over a long period. And any project that cannot be made attractive to the big financial players simply does not get built.

Infrastructure financiers, including pension funds, make big profits. But in Canada, public-private projects have so far remained publicly owned. Some of these will generate revenue – like transit lines via passenger fares – but many will not, since in Canada road and bridge tolls are politically unpopular. That’s one major reason why the financiers don’t really want to own the assets.

The bill isn’t due for decades

Why do governments continue to overpay for private finance, as Ontario’s auditor general pointed out in 2015?

Because of the time frame. Infrastructure investors, especially pension funds, want to secure revenue streams 30 and 40 years in the future. Even youthful Justin Trudeau will have long retired when the private finance credit-card bill comes due.

Another reason for the popularity and success of the Ontario/B.C. model is that governments are happy to use big contractors who hire union labour. And hospitals and prisons built through private finance and private procurement are staffed by the same public sector union workers as older facilities. So opposition from labour and NDP opposition is muted.

Nonetheless, the infrastructure model used for the past decade, in which major infrastructure projects continue to be publicly owned and union labour is protected, is now in danger.

The federal government is making noises that it will fund the new “Infrastructure Bank” – which is not actually a bank but an infrastructure agency, to confuse Canadians even further – by selling off the few major assets that Ottawa owns, mainly airports.

The Liberals’ Infrastructure Bank might not ever do much; its predecessor from the Stephen Harper era, Public-Private Partnerships Canada, hardly made a dent.

It sounds virtuous – but isn’t

But a very real danger lies in what insiders call “asset recycling,” an approach heavily promoted by infrastructure guru Michael Fenn. The term sounds vaguely ecological, but it means selling off choice public assets to raise funds for infrastructure capital costs, as Ontario did with 51 per cent of Hydro One. That selloff netted the province $9 billion.

The Ontario Ministry of Infrastructure’s 2017 update states that in addition to Infrastructure Ontario’s public-private projects, the province is also “unlocking the value of existing assets …all net revenue gains from the sale of designated assets are to be credited… to support the province’s key infrastructure priorities.”

If you did this at home, you’d essentially be selling your backyard to pay for a new summer cottage. You can make it sound somewhat virtuous by calling it “asset recycling,” but that’s what it is.

And we won’t see governments selling off dilapidated public housing, which could actually use new investment. Instead, they’ll sell well-maintained, revenue-generating assets – those that would, if they remained in public hands, provide steady revenues into the future.

So the privatizations that Ontario’s neocon Mike Harris dreamed of in the 1990s?

They may be at long last be successfully implemented by a host of Liberals.

Mariana Valverde is an urban law and governance, and infrastructure researcher. She is a professor of criminology at the University of Toronto. This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

U of T economist to lead Queen's Park review of child care affordability

ullahnor — Thu, 20 Jul 2017 20:06:31 +0000

U of T economist to lead Queen's Park review of child care affordability

ullahnor Thu, 07/20/2017 - 16:06

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U of T Scarborough economist will be looking at how to make child care affordable in Ontario (photo by Ken Jones)

Topic

U of T Scarborough's Gordon Cleveland, an associate professor of economics, teaching stream, has been asked to review the affordability of child care in Ontario.

The Toronto Star says Cleveland has been asked by Queen's Park to look at ways child care can be less costly for families.

Cleveland co-authored a 1998 study with Michael Krashinsky, a fellow U of T economics professor, which found that every dollar invested in high-quality child care produces $2 in social and economic benefits, according to the Star. Last fall, Cleveland completed a study for the city, which found child care was too expensive for three-quarters of families.

Cleveland’s provincial review, which will be completed by February, is part of the province’s five-year child care plan to double capacity for kids by adding 100,000 licensed spots.

Read the article

U of T task force on city hall reform featured in Toronto Life

ullahnor — Thu, 20 Jul 2017 19:41:52 +0000

U of T task force on city hall reform featured in Toronto Life

ullahnor Thu, 07/20/2017 - 15:41

Cutline

A city hall task force launched by U of T recently made recommendations on how to reform municipal government in Toronto (photo by Thomas Hawk via Flickr)

Topic

School of Public Policy & Governance

Toronto Life features a School of Public Policy & Governance (SPPG) task force that recently released recommendations for reforming city hall.

The task force, launched by U of T's Gabriel Eidelman, an assistant professor at SPPG, released a report titled “A Practical Blueprint for Change” that makes 14 recommendations such as capping council meetings to 12 hours and restricting councillors’ questions to staff.

Read the article

Federal budget 2017: Funding for AI and foreign scholars to help U of T

lanthierj — Wed, 22 Mar 2017 21:34:40 +0000

Federal budget 2017: Funding for AI and foreign scholars to help U of T

lanthierj Wed, 03/22/2017 - 17:34

Jennifer Robinson

Author legacy

Jennifer Robinson

Topic

Artificial Intelligence

New funding for artificial intelligence research and support for the recruitment of established foreign scholars were among the highlights for Canadian universities in the federal budget tabled today.

The budget, announced by Finance Minister Bill Morneau, is providing $125 million to create a pan-Canadian strategy for promoting research, talent development, and industry partnerships in artificial intelligence (AI).

The government also set aside $117.6 million to establish the Canada 150 Research Chairs program, which will create approximately 25 research chairs to attract top international scholars and researchers to Canada over the next eight years.

“The federal government’s support of AI research and the creation of the Canada 150 Research Chairs program is a signal that the Government of Canada is serious about helping Canadian universities like the University of Toronto retain and recruit top scholars to propel our globally recognized research forward,” said U of T President Meric Gertler.

“This funding will enable us to strengthen our leadership in areas where our scholars are already doing exceptional work,” he continued. “It will also help ensure future generations of students can continue to learn from the best.”

The University of Toronto is widely regarded as a global leader in machine learning, a booming field in AI research that has set off global demand in academia and the corporate world for top talent. It’s also the home of the ‘godfather of machine learning’ – Geoffrey Hinton, a U of T Emeritus Distinguished Professor of Computer Science and Engineering Fellow at Google.

The budget continued support at the previous year's level for federal research granting councils. Next year’s budget is expected to tackle recommendations from the forthcoming Review of Federal Support for Fundamental Science, chaired by former U of T president David Naylor, as well as reflect the Government of Canada’s Innovation Agenda.

“We very much look forward to the national discussion that will follow the release of the Naylor Report, and will urge the Federal Government to build on its landmark commitments to unfettered research funding in Budget 2016,” President Gertler said. ”This will be crucial in enabling Canadian universities to recruit and retain academic talent from around the world at a time when Canada’s brand is rising globally.”

Federal support for research is delivered primarily through programs associated with the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC); Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council (NSERC); Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR); and the Research Support Fund, in addition to the Canada Foundation for Innovation and the Canada Research Chairs program.

Other highlights for universities from the 2017 budget include:

$950 million for Innovation Clusters over five years. The government will launch a competition in 2017 focused on supporting a small number of business-led innovation “superclusters” that have the greatest potential to accelerate economic growth in highly innovative industries such as advanced manufacturing, agri-food, clean technology, digital technology, health/biosciences and clean resources, as well as infrastructure and transportation.
$73 million for the Work-Integrated Learning Program to create up to 8,700 new work-integrated learning placements over the next four years. The program encourages partnerships between employers and interested post-secondary institutions.
$221 million over five years to Mitacs to provide 10,000 work-integrated learning placements for Canadian post-secondary students and graduates each year.
$2 million annual budget for a Chief Science Advisor and related secretariat.
A number of new investments in government research/science, which may be accessible to university researchers, including Natural Resources Canada, Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation, Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada, Fisheries and Oceans Canada and the Canada Space Agency.
$6 million in renewed funding for stem cell research through the Stem Cell Network in 2018–19.
$80.9 million over five years for new projects through the Canadian Space Agency to demonstrate and utilize Canadian innovations in space.
$241 million over the next 11 years for the National Housing Strategy, which includes expanded housing research through university networks and collaboration with other levels of government, as well as a network of innovation labs to incubate new ideas and design solutions to affordable housing challenges.
This year, the government said, it will assess how the National Research Council can best support the Innovation and Skills Plan and work to develop a new federal science infrastructure strategy.

You've got mail: Chinese mayors' inboxes shed light on country's politics

geoff.vendeville — Wed, 22 Feb 2017 22:15:33 +0000

You've got mail: Chinese mayors' inboxes shed light on country's politics

geoff.vendeville Wed, 02/22/2017 - 17:15

Cutline

Downtown Shanghai road. In one email to a Chinese mayor, a writer stated, “Is it possible that the budget for road repairs has possibly been swallowed by corruption (just a suspicion)?”(photo by Aapo Haapanen via Flickr)

Geoffrey Vendeville

Author legacy

Geoffrey Vendeville

Topic

Potholes and snow-covered streets – if officials here do nothing about these sorts of problems, they might face voters' wrath at the ballot box.

But how do citizens vent to officials in countries where there are no elections? Are their voices heard?

Those are questions that researchers from the University of Toronto asked in a joint study with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. They studied emails and letters sent to Chinese mayors' virtual mailboxes – the mayors' email addresses appear on the websites of every municipal government, often next to the biography of an official.

Read about the study at The Economist

Diana Fu, an assistant professor of political science at U of T Scarborough, and Greg Distelhorst, an assistant professor of global economics and management at MIT and former postdoctural researcher at U of T's Rotman School of Management, combed through 8,000 of these letters, with the help of research assistants, to see what citizens complained about – and how.

“If you think about China as a communist state that’s stale and inflexible, you wouldn’t even expect it to have an institution like the mayor’s mailbox,” Fu said.

Not only do these mailboxes exist on the websites of about 300 Chinese municipal governments, according to The Economist, Fu said local officials sometimes responded to the letters online and published their reply for all to see.

“They were even responding to queries that are somewhat aggressive and sarcastic,” she told U of T News.

One letter writer from Shan’an Xi, for example, complained that the government had been taking too long to fix local roads: “Is it possible that the budget for road repairs has possibly been swallowed by corruption (just a suspicion)?” the letter states.

Grace Lin, a political science student at U of T Scarborough, and Haoyao Ruan, in the statistics specialist program, helped Diana Fu with research on Chinese mayors' mailboxes (photos by Geoffrey Vendeville)

Even if Chinese officials are unelected, they still face pressure “to stay relevant and legitimate,” Fu said. And one way to do that is to listen to citizens’ complaints before they fester, added Distelhorst.

To get an overview of the complaints, the researchers used statistical methods related to machine learning to pick out the most common topics like concerns about the environment, property rights and access to benefits in the workplace.

They also examined the tone of the letters to see if the authors were using self-deprecating language or if they were more assertive.

The research was made possible with the help of two undergrads and a graduate of U of T's master's program in political science, Xie Yi.

U of T undergraduate Haoyao Ruan, in the statistics specialist program, helped Fu and Distelhorst code the thousands of letters by feeding them through an algorithm. Always interested in Chinese literature and politics, Ruan said she was happy to be involved in real-world research.

Grace Lin, a political science student at U of T Scarborough, said she helped identify words to categorize the letters by tone and content. She had taken courses in Chinese politics before, but the research with Fu gave her new insight into the lives of ordinary people.

“The letters are very emotional,” she said. “You get to see other people’s lives and how they are framing themselves in order to receive the help they want.”

"I think the most rewarding aspect of the project for me was to see this political relationship from a different angle.”

Fu's forthcoming book with Cambridge University Press, Mobilizing Without the Masses: Control and Contention in China, examines how civil society groups in China can organize under conditions of duress.

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You've got mail: Chinese mayors' inboxes shed light on country's politics

Read about the study at The Economist