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Author: Alex Usher

Authentic Universities: Choosing What Not to Be

University missions are tricky things to enunciate. From the point of view of many faculty, people who have reached their position by dint of their excellence in a specific field, tend not to view their employer’s main mission as one of providing a platform for their discipline. Understandably, this is not how local publics view things – they tend to look for something more externally-focused. Yet when institutions try to enunciate something beyond disciplines, for many it tends to feel odd or inauthentic.

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January 22, 2026 No Comments

How Bad is Student/Youth Unemployment These Days?

Interesting question. It’s a tricky answer. Let’s dive in. Let’s start by looking at the issue of unemployment – that is, the percentage of people who are in the labour market but do not have work (i.e. it excludes people who aren’t interested). Figure 1 shows unemployment rates for full-time students and non-students aged 20-24 for the past fifty years (I exclude part-time students because they are an odd and heterogenous grouping).  Figure 1: Unemployment Rates during School Months for

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January 21, 2026 2 Comments

Farewell Cakeism, Welcome Trade-offs, Effectiveness and Efficiencies

Arguably the worst thing that has happened to western society over the past few decades has been the rise of cakeism. Though he hardly invented the idea, the doctrine is linked to former UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson, through his repeated use of the phrase “my policy on cake is pro-having it and pro-eating it”. Basically, it’s the ideology of pretending trade-offs never need to be made.   I’ve recently mentioned one example of cakeism in action, namely the proposal published

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January 20, 2026 No Comments

The Three Meanings of Tenure

It has become apparent to me recently that not everyone understands the term “tenure” in quite the same way. Basically, the misunderstanding comes down to this: is tenure a very limited term which is specifically related to protections related to academic freedom? Or does it refer to the entirety of job protections that professors have acquired over the years, many of which are not related to academic freedom? The quick answer is that strictly speaking, it’s the former, but colloquially,

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January 19, 2026 2 Comments

The Fifteen: January 16, 2026

Hi all. It’s been over a month since the last Fifteen and you might think that the world of higher education would slow down over the holidays, but you’d be wrong. Buckle up, this is a big one. 1. Back in December the government in Bulgaria was forced to resign due to anti-corruption protests that were mainly led by students (although increasingly student protest is being called “Gen Z protests”, which is interesting and I would love to understand why). Iran is also currently undergoing a spasm of

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January 16, 2026 No Comments

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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