The Canadian province of Saskatchewan has withdrawn its financial support from the troubled First Nations University, saying in a statement Wednesday night that the "government has lost confidence in the governance and management" of First Nations, Canada's only aboriginally controlled university. The federal government has said it too will re-examine its support for the university, which has been in turmoil for more than five years over the firings or departures of senior officials, allegations of serious financial irregularities, and faculty grievances that academic freedom was under attack. The Association of Universities and Colleges of Canada took the unusual step of putting the university on probation in 2007.

A University of Manitoba professor has criticized administrators for allegedly reinstating a Ph.D. candidate who twice failed his comprehensive examination apparently because of examination anxiety, the Winnipeg Free Press reported. The professor, whom the newspaper did not identify, says he was reprimanded and threatened with dismissal after he wrote to the university senate alleging that a senior administrator had reinstated the student (in an unspecified academic program) and ruled that his Ph.D. would be determined solely on the basis of his doctoral dissertation. The university would not comment because of privacy law; however, it does provide alternatives for students with medically certified exam anxiety.

One of the founders of the University of Quebec at Montreal, Georges Anglade, died in the Haiti earthquake this week, family members confirmed. The retired geography professor and his wife, who also died in the quake, split their time between the two countries in recent years. They emigrated to Canada from Haiti in 1969, and Mr. Anglade taught social geography in Montreal for 30 years. He was jailed during the regime of the infamous Jean-Claude (Baby Doc) Duvalier after doing aerial surveillance by helicopter for an academic book he was writing, according to a profile in The Globe and Mail, and vowed not to return to Haiti while the dictator remained in power.

A former National Hockey League player who served five and a half years in prison for his role in a failed murder-for-hire plot could return to the ice this season as a player for Saint Mary's University, in Halifax, Nova Scotia, according to The Chronicle Herald, a local newspaper. The player, Mike Danton, who is 29, was paroled in September and is seeking to enroll at Saint Mary's. The university has determined that he is eligible to play, if accepted as a student. However, the parole board will also have to weigh in, since parolees cannot travel out of province, a status that would limit his ability to play in away games. The TSN network said Mr. Danton technically was already a student because he took correspondence courses from the univiersity while in prison.

Canada's educational report card, released today by the Conference Board of Canada, ranges from several A's to a D in the production of Ph.D.'s (see a comparative chart). Over all Canada improved this year in several categories, moving into second place in the annual comparison of 17 developed countries. Finland topped the education and skills rankings, and the United States placed 16th. The report card blames Canada's poor grade on Ph.D.'s on "insufficient support" and says the country's failure to support world-class universities is one reason for its comparative weaknesses in high-level academic achievement and innovation.

Women continue to outnumber men in Canadian graduating classes, according to a report issued on Wednesday by Statistics Canada, a government agency. While the number of university graduates per year increased by 43 percent from 1992 to 2007, the graduating classes went from 56 percent women to 61 percent women. The report also shows a jump in the number of international graduates from 2001 to 2006.

The director of Canada's best-endowed policy think tank is apparently out of a job, according to an article in today's Globe and Mail that says that John English, a respected academic, was fired for failing to give the Centre for International Governance Innovation a high enough profile and sufficient influence. The center was founded seven years ago by Jim Balsillie, the BlackBerry chief executive, and is linked to the University of Waterloo and Wilfrid Laurier University. The billionaire businessman gave Mr. English, a former professor of history, instructions to attract the best policy scholars in the world, but the newspaper says problems slowed down that mandate. The center now has 60 senior fellows, researchers, and staff members. On Wednesday, Mr. English refused to comment to the local Waterloo paper. A search is on for a new director. Until then, Thomas A. Bernes, former...

A book on education reform released today says Ontario, with 19 universities and the largest number of students in of any province in Canada, should follow other provinces by creating undergraduate-only institutions. The book, Academic Transformation: The Forces Reshaping Higher Education in Ontario, was commissioned by the independent Higher Education Quality Council of Ontario. It argues that the standard model of undergraduate education in Ontario is based on the belief that students should be taught only by faculty members engaged in original research, according to the council's news release. "It is simply not affordable to have undergraduates taught only by faculty who devote the same amount of time and effort to research as to teaching," said one of the authors, Michael Skolnik, a professor emeritus at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education.

Canada needs to develop national standards to measure the quality of its higher-education system, according to the Canadian Council on Learning. In a report released today, the nonprofit organization points out that Canadians appreciate their public system but find it almost impossible to judge the quality of various institutions, partly because of jurisdictional differences. Education is a provincial responsibility in Canada, and colleges and universities can have different purposes, customs, and operations, depending on the province. The report says Canada would be likely to attract more foreign students if it had a set of national standards that indicated quality assurance. Noting that other countries have developed such standards, Paul Cappon, the council's president and chief executive, said, "We have to do the same."

A 38-year-old internationally recognized chemistry professor at the University of Ottawa died last week of what is suspected to have been swine flu, as the H1N1 flu is commonly known. According to the Ottawa Citizen, Keith Fagnou held the university research chair in novel catalytic transformations, won the Polanyi Prize in Chemistry, and recently became the first Canadian to win the international OMCOS award, given every other year to an outstanding scientist under 40 in organometallic chemistry.