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Author: Alex Usher

OECD Education at a Glance, 2024

Last Tuesday, the OECD published Education at a Glance, 2024. As usual, there is a whack of interesting comparative data in there—more than usual, actually, as I will show you in a second (and Canadian data is for the most part not missing, which is pretty great). However, I do want to say that the data on Canadian tertiary education finance shows a puzzling and steep decline which I can’t replicate using any data issued in Canada. For the moment,

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September 16, 2024 1 Comment

Rhetoric and Realities: The Evolution of UK Higher Education with Nick Hillman

Hi everyone. I’m Alex Usher and this is The World of Higher Education Podcast. Higher education in the United Kingdom — and more specifically England — is in notably perilous financial shape. A quick glance at the London papers suggests that one or more institutions may be on the verge of a financial collapse. The culprits? A funding regime that has allowed funding to erode with inflation every year since 2012, and a mostly Brexit-related collapse in international student numbers. Sort

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September 12, 2024 No Comments

The Memory Hole

It should come as a surprise to no one (at least no one who has not been sheltering under a rock for the past couple of years) that Canadian universities are in for a serious bout of belt tightening. Not everywhere, and not all to the same extent. But the math is pretty simple: the international tuition fee gravy train has come to a halt and no provincial government seems willing to replace this income, either through higher block grants

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September 11, 2024 2 Comments

Does Time-to-Completion Matter?

One thing you occasionally hear from governments is complaints about the inefficiency of post-secondary education programs. This is distinct from the questions around inefficiency of post-secondary institutions, which is usually code for “those damn profs are making too much money.” The argument about program inefficiency usually goes something like this: “It’s an [X]-year program! Why are students taking [X+1] or [X + 2] years to complete. That’s inefficient! A waste of money! We need to get students through these programs

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September 10, 2024 5 Comments

Eating the Future

As anyone who was alive at the time knows, if you want to pick a decade when Canada was at its nadir, it was the 1990s. We managed to have a currency crisis, a fiscal crisis, a national unity crisis, and a recession which basically lasted seven years. It was bleak, bleak, bleak. But in one very important way, it was better than today. Because at least, even though we were broke (both Saskatchewan and Newfoundland flirted with bankruptcy in

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September 9, 2024 5 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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