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Author: Alex Usher

Supply-Side Liberalism and Post-Secondary Education

There is a new intellectual fashion in the United States called Supply-Side Liberalism.  Basically, the idea is that government’s main role is less about managing aggregate demand and more ensuring the cheapest possible supply of goods and services.  In the US, this approach is rapidly emerging as the new centrist consensus, mainly because the sudden return of inflation as a major economic phenomenon means that all the left bromides about the need to use government funding to stimulate aggregate demand

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November 24, 2022 1 Comment

Serving the Community

A few thoughts on serving the community, prompted by the book What’s Public About Public Higher Education by Stephen Gavazzi and Gordon Gee (which is not as good as their 2018 work Land-Grant Universities of the Future but it still contains interesting material). The notion of having a “community” mission is not entirely accepted within higher education.  Certainly, the “land-grant” institutions, which trace their histories back to a moment in time when the American government decided to throw science and

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November 23, 2022 1 Comment

University Finances 2021-22

Nearly all universities have posted their financial statements for 2021-22, so that means it’s time to look at how year two of COVID went for Canadian universities. Let’s define who is included in the sample.   Not all institutions have put out their 2021-22 financials including: Algoma University, the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design, Concordia University, Université Laval, Polytechnique, and the Université du Québec system, so these cannot be included.  I have also left out Mount Royal University and

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November 22, 2022 1 Comment

Laurentian (Part the Last)

I don’t know how many blogs I have written about Laurentian since February 1, 2021.  Probably a dozen or so.  But with the release last Thursday of the Ontario Auditor General’s final report into the whole affair, I think this is where we can close the book.  If you have been diligent enough to read all my posts – particularly this series from last January – my guess is that nothing in the AG’s report will surprise you all that

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November 21, 2022 2 Comments

Study Gods and Leading Universities

Morning all.  There are two recent books of note I want to highlight: Study Gods: How the New Chinese Elite Prepare for Global Competition by Yi-Lin Chiang, and Empire of Ideas: Creating the Modern University System from Germany to American to China by William C. Kirby. Study Gods is basically an ethnography of students at a couple of “top” high schools in the Beijing area.  It follows a number of students – both successful and unsuccessful – from early in

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November 17, 2022 1 Comment

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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