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Category: Academia

Strategic Planning for Ambiguous Organizations

I have been doing a fair bit of strategic planning work recently and one mantra that people like repeating when it comes this kind of exercise is “we’re not like a business, so we can’t plan like a business”.  I get why people say this, but they’re wrong.  Or rather, they’re right, but not for the reasons they think. When people say that “universities aren’t businesses”, mostly what they are thinking is that universities aren’t interested in profit, per se.  But

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November 25, 2019 2 Comments

Competition, Markets and the Persistence of Hegemonic Institutions

Competition metaphors abound in higher education.  We talk about competition for students, competition for academics.  Since the introduction of rankings – particularly the global ones about fifteen years ago – we talk about “moving up the tables”, in a squash-ladder kind of way. (There are some sumo metaphors with which I could regale you here but using my incredible powers of self-control, I will spare you, even though the Kyushu basho is currently bumming me out, what with all the top dudes

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November 19, 2019 2 Comments

Monitoring Trends in Academic Programming

Morning all.  We here at HESA Towers are launching a new publication series today, and we couldn’t be prouder.  Written by my colleague Jonathan McQuarrie, it’s called Monitoring Trends in Academic Programming, it’s fabulous, and it’s available here. The genesis of this project lies in the somewhat random calls we get from institutions every once in awhile to suggest ways of evaluating existing academic programs or to assist in designing new ones.  It’s a tricky job to do, because some of

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November 14, 2019 3 Comments

Standardization vs. Differentiation

One of the most annoying things about Canadian governments’ relationship with universities is the fact that almost none of them have a consistent theory of universities. In other words, few governments—provincial, federal, or territorial—have actual understanding of what it is they are funding and why they are funding it. Take, for instance, two of the more common criticisms governments make of universities: 1) “Universities should stop being copies of each other and start differentiating themselves and offering more niche courses”.

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November 13, 2019 No Comments

The Canadian Intangibles Agenda

A few months ago, the Public Policy Forum released an intriguing paper by Robert Asselin and Sean Speer called A New North Star: Canadian Competitiveness in an Intangibles Economy.  For various reasons, I never quite got round to reviewing it at the time, but it’s worth examining because once we get over superclusters (please, let’s all get over superclusters), the country is going to be looking for some new organizing framework for innovation and growth policy. I suspect that this “intangibles”

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November 12, 2019 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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