SSHRC: Management Student

SSHRC Dept: These aren t just any students. After a rigorous selection process, SSHRC funds only about 20 per cent of applicants, or 5 per cent of all graduate students enrolled in the social sciences and humanities at Canadian universities. So by all accounts, these are among the best and brightest in their fields, representing opinion leaders of tomorrow. They don t span all fields students in the natural sciences and engineering, or those engaged in health-related studies, are funded separately by other federal granting agencies but they do represent a wide range of disciplines, from accounting to anthropology. And since the awards are open to any subject or topic, they reflect students views of the most relevant and promising areas of research. So what are they choosing?, according to Globe and Mail. In terms of subject matter, students appear comfortable straying beyond the boundaries of their home disciplines. Thus, for example, while the number of awards in the disciplines of management or fine arts has increased, the number of awardees indicating that their research topic is primarily related to management or to arts and culture is actually falling. Students are using a variety of disciplinary or cross-disciplinary tools to approach complex issues whether it s the fine arts major studying the political role of Iranian cinema, or the management student exploring First Nations governance and in the process are helping to stretch and extend the range of scholarship in their chosen fields and one interesting source of insight comes from data on scholarships and fellowships awarded by Canada s Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council SSHRC . SSHRC awards approximately 3000 masters, doctoral and post-doctoral awards annually, and tracks students choices in terms of key discipline and subject of research. The distribution of awards reflects some of the key changes at work in academia. While familiar disciplines like psychology, literature or history still represent the largest share of awards, much of the growth is in newer, cross-disciplinary fields like communications and media studies, or urban, regional and environmental studies. Also showing big gains are the professional programs law, education, social work, management and fine arts, all of which have become increasingly research intensive in recent years. (www.immigrantscanada.com). As reported in the news.