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One Thought to Start Your Day

One Thought To Start Your Day is our founder and CEO Alex Usher’s popular daily blog, brimming with up-to-the-minute insights and informed opinions on today’s higher education industry.

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The Canada Student Grant Cut

Alex Usher November 10, 2025 No Comments

Somewhat remarkably, no media have picked up the story that the Canada Student Grants were slashed in last week’s budget. Possibly, this is because the government did not issue a press release saying in big letters, “HEY, WE ARE LOADING MORE DEBT ON LOW-INCOME STUDENTS”, and, without such an admission,

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Focus Friday: November 7

Tiffany MacLennan November 7, 2025 No Comments

Hi everyone, Tiffany here. A quick reminder that Focus Friday is happening today (November 7) from 12:30-1:30pm Eastern, and we’re taking on the biggest conversation of the week: the 2025 Federal Budget. I’ll be joined by three people who know the file inside and out: James Hammond (Director of Public

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Budget Commentary 2025

Alex Usher November 5, 2025 4 Comments

Hi all. Budget Day was yesterday, and it was a doozy. The HESA Towers team worked late into the night putting together our usual Budget Commentary for you to peruse at your leisure. We hope you enjoy it. But if you haven’t the time to read it in full, here are the five big

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A Strategic Plan Typology

Alex Usher November 4, 2025 No Comments

I have spent a few days recently reviewing new strategic plans at global top 200 universities (partly because of some talks I am giving in China and India this month, and partly because, as I mentioned yesterday, there’s a section on “what’s new in strategic plans” in our new World

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Utrecht, Georgetown, Manchester

Alex Usher November 3, 2025 1 Comment

I’ve been poking around a lot of university websites from around the globe recently – mainly but not exclusively because I’m putting the finishing touches to The World of Higher Education – Year in Review (due out December 4th and it’s going to be great). And, in the course of

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The Fifteen: October 31, 2025

Alex Usher October 31, 2025 No Comments

Welcome to The Fifteen, a global round-up of the stories animating higher education institutions and systems around the globe. Let’s get to it. 1. From the US, an update on the Compact: of the nine original invitees, there are now seven “no”s, one “we’re not not saying no” (Vanderbilt) and one radio silence (UT

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Inside the Gaokao: China’s Defining Test with Ruixue Jia

Alex Usher October 30, 2025 No Comments

Every year, over 13 million students in China spend two full days taking the country’s university entrance exam, the Gaokao. It’s an event that most take years preparing for, starting in primary school, and the results determine not only where students will end up spending their university years, to a

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Some Thoughts on the Use of AI in Teaching

Alex Usher October 29, 2025 2 Comments

I spent part of last week in Tempe at Arizona State University’s conference on Agentic AI and the Student Experience, which was a pretty interesting event. It made me think awhile about AI in higher education, which I thought I’d share with y’all. My POV on this basically comes down to

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Quebec’s Private Student Loan Moment

Alex Usher October 28, 2025 1 Comment

Although we tend to think of student loans as either being something done by banks for profit or by governments to correct for market failures, there is a third type of student loan: namely, private, not-for-profit companies using a mix of private and public funds for charitable reasons. Probably the

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