The World of Higher Education Podcast Listen now →

The World of Higher Education Podcast Listen now →

Category: Academia

Higher Education for Hep Cats

Over the years I have collected, for your amusement, a number of different descriptors and metaphors for a universities: “a group of departments united by a common steam plant” (Robert Hitchins), “the most loosely-coupled organization on earth outside of terrorist cells” (me), etc.  But maybe my favourite metaphor for universities is a musical one: a jazz band. Jazz is a very odd form of music in that it is improvisational yet collective.  The level of musical talent and concentration needed to create good

Read More »
October 16, 2019 2 Comments

Time for a MOOC reckoning

Ah, MOOCs.  The decade’s most over-hyped higher education fad: indeed, possibly the most ludicrously over-hyped fad the sector has ever seen.  About three years ago, I chronicled the decline of MOOCs from the dizzying heights of 2012 onwards.  But in the last couple of weeks, there have been a few developments which suggest that the MOOC era may be well and truly dead. First up was the news that Arizona State University was letting its “Global Freshman Academy” wind down.  The Global Freshman

Read More »
October 10, 2019 4 Comments

Ant Colonies and the Art of Managing Universities

One of the problems in being a university manager is this assumption that being in charge of all or part of an organization means you actually have some control over what goes on inside it.  But this is not, in fact, true, or at least not in the way that anyone outside academia would understand the word “control”.  This is because individual universities are basically ants.  Individual biological entities?  Certainly.  But more importantly, they are part of a larger colony

Read More »
October 1, 2019 3 Comments

Sagas and Plots

Late last year I wrote about Burton Clark and the notion of “organizational sagas”; that is, the stories people in organizations…

Read More »
September 20, 2019 3 Comments

Servant Universities

A couple of days ago I discussed the choice Canadian institutions had between pursuing an international student market and serving local communities.  I am sure this remark will have been denounced as a false choice by many – and to be fair, it isn’t a perfect binary – so I thought I would expand on that thought. The notion of institutions “serving” their communities is, in some ways, a comparatively recent one.  The medieval universities “served” their communities by attracting students and

Read More »
August 29, 2019 No Comments
Load More

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.

Subscribe

Search Posts

Search Publications

Social Media

Linkedin Youtube Spotify

Recent Posts

More thoughts on...