The World of Higher Education Podcast Listen now →

The World of Higher Education Podcast Listen now →

Author: Alex Usher

Rapid Collegiality and How to Achieve It

Over the past few years, I have on occasion (see here and here) emphasized the need for institutions to practice “rapid collegiality”: that is, to find ways of making decisions more rapidly without sacrificing the notion that in a shared governance system, decision-making responsibilities have to be broadly inclusive. The challenge is not only that we have more or less come to equate collegiality with unanimity (or at least provided an awful lot of people with an awful lot of

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November 3, 2026 2 Comments

Alberta in a Nutshell (2026)

Morning all. A couple of weeks ago, I told you I’d be spending a good number of blogs this year looking at provincial higher education systems and how they are doing. I’m going west-to-east and today it’s Alberta’s turn.  As figure 1 shows, overall enrollment in Alberta post-secondary institutions is up by just over 80% since the turn of the century. The graph makes it appears as though most of the growth has been in universities, and that’s true in

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November 2, 2026 No Comments

The Fifteen: October 23, 2026

Hi all. A big one this week, with education-related protests in at least half a dozen countries. Let’s get started. That’s all for now. The blog is off next week – we’ll see you back here on November 13 for the next edition of the Fifteen.

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October 23, 2026 No Comments

Inside Italian Higher Education: Excellence, Affordability and Change

This podcast basically comes in three flavours. In one, we interview authors of new and interesting books. In the second, we talk about current events in one country or another. And in the third, we talk about specific countries’ higher education systems and what makes them interesting and/or distinctive. In the early days of the podcast, we used to do a lot more of number three, but we haven’t lately because, well, we managed to cover most of the world

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October 22, 2026 No Comments

BC Election Manifesto Analysis 2026

I shouldn’t have to write this blog. This Saturday’s provincial election is completely unnecessary. But we’re having it anyways because the galaxy-brains around Premier Dave Eby couldn’t figure out in time that a catastrophically divided opposition might just become less catastrophically divided if faced with the threat of an imminent election.  Anyways.  This is not a good election for post-secondary education. Maybe not quite the worst I’ve ever seen in my fifteen-odd years of doing this, but it’s close. I’ll

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October 21, 2026 No Comments
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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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