The World of Higher Education Podcast Listen now →

The World of Higher Education Podcast Listen now →

Author: Alex Usher

Performance-Based Funding in Europe

If you’re in North America, you know that one of the perennial debates in higher education finance is about the efficacy of performance-based funding, or PBF, with the bulk of the academic evidence suggesting in one way or another that such schemes do not achieve their purported aims. On this week’s episode of The World of Higher Education Podcast, Dr. Ben Jongbloed from the Centre for Higher Education Policy Studies – that’s CHEPS – at the University of Twente in

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May 26, 2023 1 Comment

What Six Questions Tell Us About the Ontario Government

In the final scenes of the 1991 movie The Russia House, as Sean Connery is about to give “the shopping list” – a comprehensive list of questions about Soviet rocket technology – to what MI6 and the CIA believe is a potential Russian defector, there’s a conversation between a young agent and Edward Fox, who plays Sean Connery’s handler. “Sir, the shopping list.  It’s only questions isn’t it?  It wouldn’t tell anyone anything?” “Everything.  It would tell what we know

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May 24, 2023 2 Comments

Alberta Election Manifestos 2023

Alberta goes to the polls next Monday, so it’s time for another edition of “check out those election promises”.  I’ll restrict my comments to the New Democratic Party (NDP) and the United Conservative Party (UCP) since those are the only parties likely to win seats or crack 3% of the vote (yes, yes, the Alberta Party – colour me unconvinced). You can see the New Democratic Party Platform here.  It’s not quite a platform in the traditional sense of having

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May 23, 2023 1 Comment

Colombian Higher Education

On this week’s episode of the World of Higher Education Podcast, Javier Botero joins us to discuss Colombian higher education. These days he’s a lead consultant at the World Bank, but formerly he was the Vice Minister of Higher Education in Colombia, and he’s here with us today to provide an overview of recent policy developments in the nation. Colombia’s higher education system is complex. In addition to a large number of universities, it also has two other sectors, one

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May 18, 2023 No Comments

Bad Faith Arguments About the Demise of Science

You may have heard about the article “In Defense of Merit and Science” that was rejected by “several prominent mainstream journals” before eventually being published by the newish Journal of Controversial Ideas.  Well, I’ve read the paper and it’s a trash fire of a document which thoroughly deserved every single one of its rejections.  In fact, it is such a trash heap, one suspects that it was submitted to these journals in full knowledge it would be rejected so that the

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May 17, 2023 No Comments

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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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