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Author: Alex Usher

The Age of Volatility

Morning all.  Yes, the summer is over and classes are returning, but fortunately your daily intake of higher education commentary/snark/contrarianism is back as well.  I missed you guys, too. Anyways, welcome to the 2022-23 academic year.  This was supposed to be the year we got back to “normal”.  And the occasional campus mask mandate aside (which I fully approve), on the surface maybe this year will feel a bit 2019-ish.  But if you look underneath the hood, things are not

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August 29, 2022 2 Comments

Fin (pour l’instant)

So, this is the final entry for Year XI of the One Thought Blog.  I hope you have enjoyed another year of my semi-structured scribblings.  Regular service will resume sometime around Labour Day (not quite sure about the exact date yet). I usually end my writing years broadly assessing where we are as a sector and overall, I tend to the positive, if for no other reason than to throw my usual curmudgeon persona into sharp relief.  But this year, I

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June 9, 2022 3 Comments

The Mid-2022 Reading Review

I know every single one of you blog readers brings higher ed literature to the beach, and so – since we are approaching the end of the blog season – it’s time for a reading round-up to help you fill out your summer reading list. I’ve been reading fewer institutional histories than usual.  There was The University of New Zealand by Hugh Parton, a history of higher education in New Zealand up to about 1960, when the country had four campuses but

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June 8, 2022 No Comments

Quebec in a Nutshell

All right, we’ve done seven of these and it’s time to look at Canada’s outlier province.  You know, the one where every time you try to explain Canada to someone in another country and you have to say “of course, it’s usually different in Quebec.” Let’s start with student numbers.  Quebec is, relatively speaking, the least university-based system in the country.  Just under 45% of all postsecondary students in the province are enrolled in CEGEPs, and as recently as 2001-02 university

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June 7, 2022 No Comments

The “Higher Education” Premiers of the 21st Century.

Quick, fun exercise: who are the top “Higher Education Premiers” of the 21st Century?  Let’s define this as simply the Premiers who made the largest investments in the sector (my criteria here is biggest increase over any four-year period – otherwise premiers with long tenures tend to get penalized).  Go ahead, write down your top four right now before I walk you through the data.  Anyone who guesses number 1 gets a gold star because I sure as hell didn’t guess

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June 6, 2022 1 Comment

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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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