Author: Alex Usher

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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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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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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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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That Yale Report

If you’ve been paying attention to US higher education for the last couple of weeks, you will no doubt have noted a report from Yale University on “Trust in Higher Education”, with much favorable and unfavorable commentary. But what does it really say? And does it make much sense, for Yale or higher education generally, either in the United States or elsewhere? So, one thing that is important to understand about this is that while it contains ten sections, it

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