About Top Ten
As part of our mission of moving higher ed forward, we publish the Top Ten to keep you informed about the top stories, trends, and opinions affecting postsecondary education in Canada.
Working hand-in-hand with our core research team, who work directly with hundreds of institutions across Canada, our Top Ten team scours thousands of news sources every day—college and university media releases, wire services, government announcements, new statistics and research reports, national and international media, blogs, and more—and hand-picks the ten most relevant, interesting, and important stories affecting professionals working in higher ed.
You'll receive an email first thing each weekday morning that contains bite-sized digests of the Top Ten stories, with links to original sources.
Our Focus
The Academica Top Ten reflects our company philosophies: we do our best to keep it intelligent, informative, and useful to our readers. This publication is an aggregation of the daily news in higher education that prioritizes major news of national interest. We also try to provide our readers with a diverse, regionally representative set of news stories each day (See What We Cover, below).
Since we’re confined to ten stories per day, busy news days may see similar or eligible stories omitted from the Top Ten. We make every effort to fit them in later in the week if possible. However, due to the nature of the Academica Top Ten and the number of emails we receive on any given day, please note that we do not discuss the selection process or inclusion/exclusion rationale for individual stories.
Our Sources
The Academica Top Ten is a news aggregation service and not a source of independent journalism. Academica Group's editorial team monitors newswires, regional national and international news media, education blogs, institutional media releases, campus newspapers, and student newspapers. We will often weight stories more heavily if they have been covered by a major news source as opposed to only appearing in an institution's press release or campus newspaper.
We attempt to use the most reputable and reliable sources available and corroborate stories across sources where possible, but Academica Group assumes no responsibility for the accuracy of stories written by other journalists.
If you or your institution publishes an official response to one of our sources after it has been published in the Academica Top Ten, we will consider your response as a Postscript at the bottom of our Academica Top Ten. If you believe that we have misrepresented the message of an article or other source we have covered, please notify us so that we can review our coverage. If you are disputing the accuracy of the original source we are covering, you will need to contact the source about your concerns.
If you want to submit a story for consideration to the Top Ten, please note that we will only consider stories that are accompanied by a link to an online source.
What We Cover
We prefer to publish strong, nationally-relevant stories from a variety of topics, regions, and sources each day. Stories from the below areas and themes are generally considered for the Academica Top Ten.
- Accreditation
- Admissions/Enrolment/Graduation Trends at a National or Provincial level
- Closures/Mergers
- Competitive Rankings pertaining to more than one Canadian Institution
- Donations, Capital Projects, and New Facilities
- Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion
- Financial Issues
- Fundraising Campaigns
- Government Funding Announcements
- Government Higher Education Policy
- Indigenous Education
- International Education
- Lawsuits/Legal Cases
- Online/Open Education
- Program/Department Additions, Cuts, and Changes
- Research and Statistics related to Higher Ed
- ROI/Outcomes
- Skills/Labour Shortages
- Student Services/Engagement
We frequently cover editorials relating to postsecondary education. As with all news stories included in the Top Ten, editorials are expected to use respectful language and not use a tone intended to explicitly belittle specific individuals or groups and their points of view.
We also include a list of new appointments in each Top Ten where we celebrate those who have taken on senior positons at postsecondary institutions in the country - including presidents, vice-presidents, department and faculty chairs, and other similar ranks. We occasionally will include leadership of provincial or national organizations associated with higher education in Canada, but do not include appointments to organizations or institutions outside of the country.
Advertisements of new services, upcoming events, and job postings are also occasionally included in the Top Ten in dedicated sections (See: Advertising in the Top Ten).
What We Do Not Cover
Unless they draw significant media attention or otherwise reach national interest, the Academica Top Ten generally does not cover news that falls into the following topics:
- Academic studies, publications, fellowships, or research not related to higher ed
- Athletics
- Commencements and similar events
- Contests
- Competitions (incl. winners)
- International news that is not relevant or applicable to Canadian higher ed
- Institutional honours & awards (e.g. Best employer)
- Institutional planning and other regular releases
- Institutional or campus records
- Scholarships
- Services to the sector*
- Speakers and campus visitors
- Student competitions
- Student/faculty/staff/alumni awards and accolades
- Student fundraisers
- Upcoming events*
- Volunteerism
Generally, we also 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.
*Events, services, and other new announcements that may benefit readers in the sector may be advertised in the Academica Top Ten.
Advertising in the Top Ten
We do offer advertising and sponsored content opportunities to those wishing to share upcoming events, services, and other information with the sector. We only offer these opportunities to those who are looking to share opportunities and services that are directly related to Canadian postsecondary education and that we believe would be beneficial to our readership. Please note that in order to preserve the integrity of the Top Ten, we do not currently allow sponsorship of individual stories in the daily digest or any other influence of the core contents.
Every edition of the Academica Top Ten features career positings from our Academica Careers portal. If you would like to post a career ad or browse our available career ads, please visit www.academicacareers.com.
Our Style Guide
The Academica Top Ten style guide is primarily based on the punctuation and reference style of the Modern Languages Association (MLA), as well as drawing on Canadian Press (CP).
We tend to avoid using unfamiliar abbreviations without including the full term at least once prior within the newsletter, although we find it invaluable to use "PSE" to abbreviate "Postsecondary Education." We also find that institutional abbreviations are invaluable to keep the Top Ten readable, and generally use the institutional web domains as the accepted short form unless otherwise advised, thus "UBC," "uAlberta," and "MUN," for example.
Outdated Links
Over the lifespan of the Top Ten, we have linked our stories to over 50,000 external releases and publications! Since our editorial team is kept busy full-time keeping abreast of current news, we are unfortunately unable to review, update, or delete links that have changed, been removed, or moved behind a paywall. Older stories in the Archive may contain expired links — we sincerely apologize for the inconvenience, but this situation is beyond our control.
