Subscriptions
Academica's Top Ten is provided as a free service to clients, associates and friends. It is intended for college and university marketing, communications and advancement professionals, guidance counsellors, government policy analysts and professional journalists. We do not actively discourage students or potential students from subscribing, but reserve the right to refuse subscriptions to any party without the need for explanation.
Our Focus
Academica's Top Ten reflects our company philosophies: we do our best to keep it intelligent and informative, accurate, objective, politically neutral, interesting and useful to our own consultants and our clients. We attempt to concentrate on major news of national interest affecting college and university recruitment, advancement, reputation or brand. Because we confine our stories to just 10 per day, on busy news days we may be forced to leave out stories that would otherwise be included. We make every effort to fit them in later in the week if possible.
What We Cover
Institutional rebrandings, major advertising campaigns, and yes, competitive rankings, are all priority stories for Academica's Top Ten. Because we believe that effective marketing demands solid research data, we pay particular attention to statistics and research reports, whatever their source. We pay attention to ground-breaking recruitment tactics, and to "first-in-Canada" academic programs or facilities. Donations, new capital projects or facilities at Canadian institutions must generally be over $10 million to be considered national news, but donations that result in the renaming of institutions or professional faculties are usually covered.
Since the Top Ten is intended to inform our clients and consultants, stories regarding Academica's client institutions may get slightly preferential treatment, and occasional information about Academica Group itself will appear. Our intention is to keep self-promotional content to one item per week -- just 2% advertising content, which we believe is exceedingly fair.
What We Ignore
Academica's Top Ten ignores news that is not of national interest, such as most campus events, speakers, appointment notices, donations, scholarships, commencements, athletics and volunteerism. (Exceptions are made for particularly well-known individuals like Bill Gates or the Dalai Lama, who make headlines on their own.) We also ignore news that is primarily of academic (not advancement) interest, such as academic studies, publications, or research findings, unless it generates a media frenzy that affects institutional reputation (such as cold fusion or the discovery of the holy grail). We ignore international news that is not relevant in some way to Canadian higher education recruitment or advancement.
Just like most journalists, we pay more attention to bad news than good (sorry!). Deficits, high-profile terminations, labour strikes, terrorist threats all warrant coverage, while balanced budgets, contract renewals, averted strikes and secure campuses don't get covered.
Generally, we strive to avoid repeating stories unless something truly significant makes it news again. That can mean that the successful resolution to a strike doesn't actually get coverage, even though the strike did. We also avoid political name-dropping and self-serving announcements by governments that serve political purposes.
Sequence
Generally, we order the Top Ten stories from most important to least each day. Major disasters, terrorism, crimes or loss of life tend to rise to the top, as do capital projects or major investments. Otherwise, we deal first with news about Canadian institutions, then American and international news, then marketing and recruitment strategies and tactics, then technology stories (typically web 2.0), and finally interest stories about youth culture of interest to recruiters.
Our Sources
Academica Group's research team monitors newswires, regional national and international news media, education blogs, institutional media releases, campus newspapers, and student newspapers. Generally, we try to find reliable sources to corroborate stories in student media or online blog postings, particularly where stories appear sensational or libellous, but Academica Group assumes no responsibility for the accuracy of stories written by other journalists. We attempt to provide balanced coverage, when stories involve multiple institutions, or when there are two sides to a political or labour relations story. We make every effort to attribute quotes accurately, and include links to source stories. (Items without a webpage we can use as reference are sometimes not included in the Top Ten.)
Our Style Guide
Because it's firmly engrained in our chief editor's academic training, we generally follow the punctuation and reference style of the Modern Languages Association (MLA). We tend to avoid unfamiliar abbreviations, although we find it invaluable to use "PSE" to abbreviate "Post-Secondary Education."
Every institution has its own preference for abbreviating its own name, but we find abbreviations invaluable to keep the Top Ten readable. We have recently taken to using institutional web domains as the accepted short form, thus "uToronto," "UBC," "uAlberta," and "MUN," for example.
Submitting News
Canadian colleges, universities, and education-related agencies are encouraged to include Academica's Top Ten on their media distribution lists. Please email us at today@academica.ca.
Feedback is Welcome
Academica's Top Ten is, among other things, intended to foster dialogue in the Canadian PSE community. We encourage feedback to our stories, and will respond personally if you email us at today@academica.ca.