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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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HESA’s AI Observatory: What’s new in higher education (Feb. 16th, 2024)

Spotlight Good afternoon all,  In today’s newsletter, we share articles covering a broad range of topics – from taking a whole institution approach to GenAI, to using GenAI in research. Some also cover how GenAI might impact assessments and feedback, and particular considerations related to using GenAI in creative work

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Alex Usher on Canadian Higher Education

This is the World of Higher Education podcast. I’m Tiffany MacLennan, one of the producers of the World of Higher Education Podcast, usually a Research Associate at HESA, but currently a full-time master’s student. About two years ago, I pitched the idea of a podcast to Alex to which he

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Ball State vs. Stanford

When higher education wants to talk about itself in positive terms, the story it likes to tell is a story like the one of Stanford University in Palo Alto, California. You can read about Stanford’s history in books like Annalee Saxenian’s Regional Advantage and to a lesser extent Rebecca Lowen’s

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Students and the Labour Market: It’s Better Than You Think

I was playing around with Labour Force Survey data this past weekend (as one does) and found some stuff worth sharing. Ready? Let’s go. First, let’s look at student employment rates. One of those things that “everyone knows” is that student employment levels are continually rising. Bur in fact this

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Lagging

I was perusing a Chronicle of Higher Education article on American state expenditures on post-secondary education when I saw a completely jaw-dropping graph. Figure 1: Jaw-Dropping Visual from The Chronicle on State Funding I mean…wow. Right? This figure actually lines up with something I had noticed a few months ago

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HESA’s AI Observatory: What’s new in higher education (Feb. 9th, 2024)

Spotlight Good afternoon all,    In today’s newsletter, we share multiple resources and articles focusing on GenAI in research. If this topic is of interest to you, make sure to attend our upcoming AI Roundtable on research integrity (see below for more details).    Also, ICYMI – HESA recently launched its AI Advisory

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Higher Education in France

If you study global higher education, one of the hardest habits to shake is that of assuming isomorphism. That building over there is a university? With departments and faculties? I went to a university with departments and faculties. I therefore know exactly what s going on in there. Except that is not really true, Universities

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The New Model University

You may have heard once or twice about Arizona State University and how innovative it is. You probably don’t know the half of it. Today I am going to rectify that because it may be the institution from which Canadian universities need to learn the most over the next few

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Student Visas, Old Systems and New

If you want to know how messed up the visa processing system is about to get in the next couple of months…well, buckle up. Y’all may remember that when Minister Marc Miller announced caps on student visas, he indicated that each province would be responsible for allocating visas among its

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The Dawn of a New Era

The events of the last couple of weeks have kept everyone in the higher education sector in a whirlwind. But step back a minute. It’s worth thinking about the big picture. Some of you may remember this graph which I drew about a year ago, looking at the history of

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