A Short History of Canadian Book Publishing

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In February 2014, Oxford University Press Canada announced that it was shutting down the school division, which published textbooks and learning resources for kindergarten to grade 12 classrooms across Canada. Like any other Canadian industry or sector, publishing has become increasingly affected by large, multinational—and usually foreign—mergers and consolidations. The largest companies producing and distributing learning resources in Canadian classrooms are not Canadian at all. Pearson Education, Nelson, and McGraw-Hill dominate the already small, but competitive, market in Canada.

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The Long History of Practical (University) Education

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Over the past few years, newspapers, blogs, and other media sources have recounted the endemic problems associated with the underemployment of university graduates. One of the latest pieces to explore this topic was CBC’s The Current with Anna Maria Tremonti, which aired last week and focused on the income gap between tenured-track professors and adjunct or sessional instructors. The vast majority of commentary has highlighted the “gloom and doom” of humanities and liberal arts graduates. Many are quick to point out that humanities students are less likely to find a well-paying job following graduation, while others show that graduates in history or philosophy are almost always paid less than those with degrees outside of arts or humanities. Still others, like The Current, have focused on those people at the problem’s apogee: PhDs in the humanities.

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