2025/01/07 by Trevor J. Barnes · 1 voice
Decision Sciences · Social Sciences · #Evaluation and Performance Assessment #Higher Education Governance and Development #Evaluation of Teaching Practices
paper · pdf · doi:10.1111/tran.12740
openalex publication_date 2025/01/07 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/05/21
Abstract Canada has never established a national research assessment exercise for its post‐secondary institutions. This is a consequence of Canada's nineteenth century legal foundation as an independent nation‐state that made higher education a provincial rather than a federal responsibility. In this sense, the experience of Canada over the past four decades makes a counterfactual to the many countries that implemented national research assessments during the same period. Nonetheless, there have been sharp criticisms of the distribution of federal government research monies among researchers in Canadian universities and colleges. These criticisms are discussed along with the effects on Canadian higher education of neoliberalism. Neoliberalism is often identified as a cause of national research assessments. However, Canada is the seeming paradox of having its post‐secondary institutions subject to neoliberalism but not subject to national research assessments.