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Author: Alex Usher

Presidential Salaries, Redux

Every once in a while I write a piece comparing the salaries of Canadian University Presidents with the salaries of University Presidents in other countries (see here, here and here). These are always some of my least-liked pieces because what I write does not fit with people’s prejudices. Get faculty—or students, or the general public for that matter—started on what ails Canadian universities, and eventually the subject of “crazy Presidential salaries” gets mentioned. Even without looking at the data in

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January 15, 2024 5 Comments

Javier Milei and Argentinian Higher Education

One of the most striking global political stories of 2023 was the presidential election in Argentina, where a relative newcomer, Javier Milei, with a mixed set of right wing and libertarian views, was elected to the presidency with a relatively large margin in the second round of voting on the 19th of November. At one level, the defeat of the ruling Peronist Party was not surprising, given the country’s general state of economic malaise and inflation running at well over

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January 11, 2024 No Comments

A Deeply Unhelpful Federal Court Ruling

Just before Christmas, the federal court released a judgement with respect to the case of a Chinese student applying to a Mechanical Engineering PhD program at the University of Waterloo and whether or not an immigration official was justified in denying a visa on national security grounds.  The decision has some enormous and (I think) deleterious ramifications for graduate student recruitment in Canada.  The background to this issue, obviously, is the rising concern about espionage in universities, in particular by

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January 10, 2024 1 Comment

Does Ontario’s Auditor General Understand Universities?

Back in December, Ontario’s Auditor General released a “Value-for-Money” audit of York University.  It is…odd.  Almost disqualifyingly so.  If I were in charge of York’s comms, I would have ripped the AG a new one over nonsensical, utterly context-free “findings” and recommendations (obviously there are good reasons why no one puts me in charge of comms).   However, since I have no affiliation with York University at present, I am in a position to do the said ripping, because clearly someone

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January 9, 2024 5 Comments

Global McGill

Welcome back, everyone.  Let’s jump in. You will recall that last fall the Legault government, reeling from a by-election loss to a suddenly resurgent Parti Québécois, decided to parade its nationalist bona fides by giving an unprovoked kicking to some major anglophone institutions: to wit, McGill, Concordia and Bishop’s.  This kicking – which was imposed on all universities but clearly had a disproportionate impact on the three anglo schools – consisted of two separate policies. Imposing a minimum $17,000/year tuition

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January 8, 2024 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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