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Author: Alex Usher

Stratégie a la Québecoise

Located only a few hundred kilometers away from one another along the St. Lawrence, l’Université Laval and l’Université de Montréal are the province’s two biggest and most research-intensive French-language institutions. Both released new strategic plans in the past year or two. Université de Montréal’s plan runs from 2022-2032 and Université de Laval’s was released this past fall and runs from 2023-2028. Bound to some extent by similar political, economic, and social conditions, you might expect the two institutions to have similar types of styles and objectives. You

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January 29, 2024 1 Comment

The Failed Fees Free Policy in New Zealand

New Zealand has always been a place unafraid to experiment in higher education. That’s partially because change is often easier to make in small countries (it’s easier to get everyone in a room), but also because the country itself has found innovation key to success. One of the biggest recent changes was the introduction of free first year for university students, something that was introduced by Jacinda Ardern, something we discussed with a previous guest, Dave Guerin, about a year

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January 25, 2024 1 Comment

What Comes Next

Many of you have asked me over the past couple of days regarding the potential impact of Monday’s announcement on study permits and post-graduate work visas. Nationally, I can only give you one certainty: because Master’s programs—all Master’s programs—lie outside the cap, everyone and their dog is going to try to load up on students taking expensive 8 month Master’s programs. Including private institutions—the model here will be Northeastern university, with its campuses in Vancouver and Toronto (quite near HESA

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January 24, 2024 2 Comments

The New International Student Regime

So, the feds finally moved on the whole student visa thing.  And…it’s big. What I’m writing about today comes from a combination of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) Minister Marc Miller’s announcement yesterday and information passed to me about the briefing IRCC gave to university and college association heads last Friday.  It’s as up-to-date as I can make it, which is not easy because not everything I heard today was consistent with I heard over the weekend (which suggests

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January 23, 2024 17 Comments

Is Queen’s Running Out of Money?

Earlier this month, the Queen’s student newspaper, The Queen’s Journal, reported on what seems to have been an extraordinary outburst by the university’s Provost, Matthew Evans, during a campus Town Hall to discuss cutbacks in early December. During this meeting, the Provost is alleged to have said “I’m concerned about the survival of this institution. Unless we sort this out, we will go under.” The story was picked up by a number of outlets across the country, including CTV and

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January 22, 2024 6 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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