Seven Canadian business schools, including York University’s Schulich School of Business, have made the list of 39 “elite global” institutions sought out by international employers who hire MBA graduates, according to a new survey. The QS Global 200 Business Schools Report, billed as an alternative to rankings, evaluates schools by region, specialization and other criteria based on responses from 3,300 employers around the world who actively recruit MBA graduates, reported The Globe and Mail Dec. 7. Read full story.
Canada clears $15 billion Chinese takeover of an energy company
Canada on Friday allowed a Chinese state-run oil giant to move forward with $15 billion takeover of a domestic energy company, but the government indicated that such deals might not pass muster in the future….“I’m not sure you can do without state-owned enterprises,” said Burkard Eberlein, a professor of public policy at York’s Schulich School of Business, in The New York Times Dec. 7. “They’re saying, ‘We are open for business, but we are very suspicious of that kind of investor.’ ” Read full story.
Jamaica to get first patois Bible
When English teacher Faith Linton first proposed translating the Bible into Jamaica’s patois tongue in the late 1950s, most people who heard the idea shook their heads….Clive Forrester, who teaches the Jamaican tongue at York University, said the biggest obstacle to launching a patois Bible on the island has always been a psychosocial one, not a linguistic one. “The language can handle any concept or idea in the New Testament. It’s the average Jamaican speaker who has a hard time accepting Jamaican Creole in written contexts and especially one as formal as the Bible,” he said in the Toronto Star Dec. 8. Read full story.
The dissatisfaction of giving: How generosity can often be misunderstood
A Salvation Army poll found “a huge percentage of Canadians believe that people who are homeless choose to be [that way], a huge percentage think they don’t want to work,” said Stephen Gaetz, the director of the Canadian Homelessness Research Network and York University professor of education. “Those are the kind of prejudices – the other is that they’re all drug addicts and scammers,” he said in the National Post Dec. 9. And maybe the panhandler on the street will use your spare change to buy alcohol, cigarettes or drugs, he said, but thinking that the homeless need to have moral decisions made for them is infantilizing. Read full story.
On being a dragon
“I was invited to be a dragon. Or, at least, to come up to the excellent Schulich School of Business at York University and be a Dragon’s Den judge for the Innovation through Technology and Design class’s final pitch session,” wrote technologist Jay Goldman in his blog Dec. 10. “The teams had been mandated to come up with a business pitch set sometime in the near future (i.e. not restricted by today’s immediately available technology but within the realm of the possible). Their ideas had to leverage the five Es of usability: efficient, effective, engaging, error tolerant and easy to learn.” Read full story.