Milena Stanoeva
Canadian Federation for the Humanities and Social Sciences
The Gustavian Weekly published a column interrogating the stigma surrounding humanities majors. The column includes interviews with undergraduate students in the humanities on how their majors are perceived. The column argues that the humanities turn out well-rounded graduates and that their bad reputation is on the decline.
The Ottawa Citizen reports that some young people are eschewing higher education altogether. The article argues that low-income Canadians tend to overestimate the costs of education, and Canadians in general tend to underestimate the returns.
Impact of Social Sciences features a blog post on the flaws of the for-profit academic publishing industry. Author Björn Brembs mainly takes issue with the lack of access of the current system and its refusal to embrace current technology, like hyperlinking. He argues that university libraries should instead host scholarly work, creating a decentralized, open-access database.
The Economic and Social Research Council released a short video with eight case studies of the real-world impact of social sciences research. The case studies range from military operations in Afghanistan to improving corporate social responsibility.