The World of Higher Education Podcast Listen now →

The World of Higher Education Podcast Listen now →

Author: Alex Usher

Incremental Change or System Overhaul? An Update on Higher Ed Reform in NZ with Roger Smyth

In some countries, higher education policy just seems to sit still for decades. In others, hyperactivity is a more normal state. Today we’re looking at the 2020s poster child for higher education hyperactivity. It’s not the usual suspects, the UK or Australia, it’s little New Zealand where we’re making our fourth stop on this podcast in just over two and a half years. When last we were in Wellington, we talked to Chris Whelan from Universities New Zealand about university

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May 22, 2025 No Comments

The Cost Implications of AI in Postsecondary Education

I have been noodling for a while on the question of how the use of Artificial Intelligence is likely to change the cost structure of institutions, so I thought it was worth a blog. Particularly since most of the theories I hear about in this area are almost certainly wrong. The one thing I think we can confidently rule out about AI and teaching is that AI will “replace professors” (or in more extreme versions, “replace universities”). This is a

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May 21, 2025 1 Comment

Provincial Budgets 2025-26

Ok everyone, all the provincial budgets are in and so it’s time for our annual look at what another round of irresponsible pan-partisan political leadership has wrought for our sector for the next twelve months. Figure 1 shows the province-by-province breakdown of this year’s budgets, showing the change in transfers to institutions in real dollars over 1 year and 5 years for each of the ten provinces. In most provinces, collecting this data is pretty easy—you just look at the

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May 20, 2025 1 Comment

Between Excellence and Relevance: The Regional University Dilemma

Hi everyone.  I’m Alex Usher and this is The World of Higher Education podcast. Over the past few decades, Higher Education had taken on a number of new roles.  As we discussed with Ethan Schrum on this podcast over two years, in the years after World War II, universities became obsessed with showing how essential they were with solving society’s problems.  One of these problems – particularly as universities proliferated and started showing up in more and more distant locales – was regional

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May 15, 2025 No Comments

Two Ideas Long Overdue for Adoption

Two mini thoughts today rather than one long one. But they are both ideas which I think deserve to be taken more seriously than they currently are. Mergers that Make Sense You may recall that a few months ago, I skewered the idea that institutional mergers were a useful path to take for the purpose of cutting costs. But the more I have been thinking about it, there may be a pretty good case—at least in a few places—of mergers for

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May 14, 2025 3 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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