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Author: Alex Usher

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 they may end up at least to some extent shaking up some traditional research excellence hierarchies.  One of the keys here, it seems to us, is that whereas traditional defence

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June 2, 2026 No Comments

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 one put on by ApplyBoard) – no, I go for the Expo. The Expo is a kind of higher education fantasyland. Broadly speaking, there are two kinds of people on

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June 1, 2026 2 Comments

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 for now. Back in two weeks for the last fifteen before the summer break.

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May 29, 2026 No Comments

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 with world-class research institutions and mass participation. It’s achieved all this while, at the same time, working with a system and institutional culture that’s quite different from that of most

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May 28, 2026 No Comments

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 molecular biology, and large language models quite unexpectedly seem to be capable of making significant contributions to mathematics. In other fields, AI does not eliminate any steps in the research

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May 27, 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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