I’m on my way to Moscow today. It’s become one of my favourite destinations not only because I can walk around and pretend I am in my favourite novels (I highly recommend an early morning stroll to the Patriarch Ponds and then sit on one of the benches to read the opening chapter of The Master and Margarita) but also because Russia in general holds a mirror up to the west and makes you question the “normal” order of things.
The following statement was issued in a Massachusetts courtroom yesterday morning. Dozens of individuals involved in a nationwide conspiracy that facilitated cheating on college entrance exams and the admission of students to elite universities as purported athletic recruits were arrested by federal agents in multiple states and charged in documents unsealed on March 12, 2019, in federal court in Boston. Athletic coaches from Yale, Stanford, USC, Wake Forest and Georgetown, among others, are implicated, as well as parents and exam
If you’ve hung around higher education for even a millisecond, you’ll know that the sector is often told that it should listen more to industry. To the extent that institutions are about preparing graduates for a career in the labor market, and to the extent they are in the business of solving problems which are relevant to innovation and economic development, this sounds like a really good idea. Almost so good an idea as to be unarguable. Except for one
Morning all. Happy New Year. Welcome back. I’m in Southeast Asia this week taking in some sights. Travel in Asia always makes me think a lot about the ways in which different parts of the world conceive of higher education and the extent to which we both have and haven’t overcome these divisions today. Universities, as we understand them today, are a distinctively European invention. They first appeared in Mediterranean countries in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, usually under church
On Friday, I talked a little bit about rankings which looked at universities’ “Third Mission”. This is a new term for many North American readers, but it’s not much different than when we use “service” at an institutional level rather than an individual level. But the notion of “service” is itself a pretty slippery one, so perhaps it is of interest to delve into this topic a bit. Universities were, from the very beginning, seen as economic assets. Italian cities
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.
