Milena Stanoeva
Canadian Federation for the Humanities and Social Sciences
The short list of nominees for the Canada Prize in the Humanities and the Canada Prize in the Social Sciences has been announced. This year’s nominees feature a diverse set of topics, from post-soviet Russia to 1960s Toronto. The winners will be announced at a special award ceremony on Friday, March 30, 2012 at the Musée des beaux-arts in Montreal during CFHSS’s Annual General Meeting. The official press release and short list of nominees are available here. If you missed Jeremy de Beer’s Big Thinking lecture on innovation and intellectual property last week, a video is now available. Daniel Jelski, a professor of Chemistry and former dean of the School of Science and Engineering at New Paltz, argues that the future of the North American job market is in jobs that do things computers can’t do and that capitalize on empathy. According to him, students in the humanities are better prepared for a job market that emphasizes the ability to work with and understand people over a set of technical skills. A recent report by the Centre for Policy Alternatives looked at public subsidies for post-secondary education in British Columbia. According to the report, post-secondary graduates pay over $100,000 in taxes more than people with a high school diploma, which more than makes up for tax-funded subsidies for higher education.