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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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“Not Even as a Doorman”: Politics and Universities in Colombia
Colombia is one of the world’s most interesting higher education systems. With a roughly equal mix of public and private provision, it has long had to contend with issues like quality assurance and student assistance. And as a developing country, it’s always needed to balance the desire to expand its
Re: University and the Change Imperative
It’s hard for universities to do things differently. Although they are evidently capable of being flexible and doing somersaults in an emergency (see: COVID), their collective desire for ongoing change is pretty small. It’s a very conservative industry, where isomorphism rules and the most important question to be asked of
Emerging Global Themes in Defence Research
As you all know, we’ve been keeping an eye on the changing policy environment both in Canada and internationally for university research related to defence, security, and sovereignty in this new post-postwar world. Today, we thought we would share a little bit about the changes we are seeing and how
What I Learned at NAFSA 2026
I spent part of last week in Orlando, Florida at the annual NASFA Conference, which is a treat I get to enjoy every two or three years. But unlike many people, I am not really there for the conference sessions and workshops (though I did participate in a very fun
The Fifteen: May 29, 2026
Morning all. It’s been a pretty crazy couple of weeks, with all sorts of bizarre stuff happening in Latin America, a strange construction deal in Madagascar, politically-motivated campus closures in Türkiye, budget news from Austria and Australia, mergers in the UK, and much more. Let’s get to it. That’s it
How China Built a Higher Education Superpower
It’s hard to think of a higher education system that has changed more dramatically over the past half-century than China’s. In the space of just two generations, the country’s gone from the chaos of the Cultural Revolution to building one of the world’s largest and most influential university systems, complete
Some Notes on Artificial Intelligence in Higher Education, May 2026
Today is just a quick round-up of recent news and trends re: artificial intelligence in higher education – hopefully one which is a bit different from the everything-is-awesome/everything-is-terrible style of think pieces that you often see on this subject. Artificial intelligence is having significant impacts in fields like astronomy and
Overestimating in the Short Run
Nearly fifty years ago, California futurist Roy Amara coined a widely quoted adage on the subject of technological change. It says: “We tend to overestimate the effect of a technology in the short run and underestimate the effect in the long run.” This is a quote very much worth keeping
China Update 2026
Hi all. Every couple of years I spend some time going through data on Chinese higher education and, in particular, the finances of the country’s top universities. It’s been two years since the last time I did this, so here goes: Figure 1 shows total expenditures at what I call
Focus Friday: May 22
Hi all! It’s the second last Focus Friday before a summer break. Joining me this afternoon is David Hornsby, Vice-Provost (Academic and Global Learning) at Carleton University, for a conversation on Carleton’s newly released institutional AI Framework and what it actually takes to move from “we should probably do something
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