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Author: Alex Usher

2026 Provincial Budgets

Last Wednesday, Newfoundland and Labrador became the tenth province to deliver its budget, and that means it’s time for my annual review of provincial budgets. Spoiler: while it’s the usual mixed bag across most provinces, Ontario is the epicentre of this year’s stories. And not in a bad way. Let’s start with overall budgeted provincial transfers to institutions, shown below in Figure 1. Growth this year after inflation is a stunning 6.5% – a rise not seen in 20 years.

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May 5, 2026 No Comments

Mid-Year Update

So, last week, the federal government delivered its Spring Economic Update, a kind of mini-budget for people who can’t wait until November for their fix. I am sure you are wondering what, if anything, changed for post-secondary education. I’ll break it into five topics. First, there’s nothing in there on research apart from yet another round of tweaks to the Scientific Research & Experimental Development Tax Credit. No surprise there. Second, there is nothing in there rectifying or even hinting

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May 4, 2026 No Comments

The Fifteen: May 1, 2026

Morning everyone. We’re pretty heavy on events in Africa and Latin America this week, and not from countries that are the usual suspects, either. Hop on for a trip through Dar es Salaam, San José, Jakarta, and Guatemala City! That’s it for this round of the Fifteen. See you again on May 15.

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May 1, 2026 No Comments

Chair to Chancellor: Lessons in Leading Modern Universities

Every Christmas, this blog invites the University of Tennessee’s Robert Kelchen on the show to do his top 10 stories of the year in the United States. One story keeps coming up: who, in their right mind, would want to be a university president these days? What with the financial pressure, the relentless politics, both on campus and dealing with state and federal governments, it’s an absolutely thankless job. Well, today our guest is someone who maybe led the way

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April 30, 2026 No Comments

Hidden Factors in Innovation

I want to draw everyone’s attention to an excellent new thesis on innovative universities from the Netherlands. It’s called Success Factors for Innovative Universities by Daryna (Dara) Melnyk, which I think many of you would find a useful read (some of you may remember Dara from when she joined the World of Higher Education podcast back here; you may also be familiar with her own webinar on innovative universities which you can find here). To be clear, Dara’s definition of

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April 29, 2026 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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