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Category: Academia

Shifting Sources of Prestige

The currency of academia is prestige.  Professors try to increase theirs by publishing better and better papers, giving talks at conferences and so on.  Becoming more prestigious means offers to co-author with a more illustrious class of academics, increasing the chance of book deals at better university presses, etc.  And at the institutional level, universities become more prestigious by being able to attract and nurture a more prestigious group of professors, something which is done by lavishing them with higher

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November 9, 2016 1 Comment

Shifts in Credentialling

As Colin Mathews, President of the technology company Merit, remarked in an excellent little article in Inside Higher Ed a few weeks ago, credentials are a language.  One with limited vocabulary, sure, but a language nonetheless.  Specifically, it is a form of communication from educational institutions to (primarily) the labour market to convey information about their possessors.  There has been a lot of talk in the last couple of years, however, to the effect that the current vocabulary of credentials is

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November 2, 2016 5 Comments

Towards a Theory of Strategic Plans in Higher Education

I had an interesting discussion on twitter a few days ago about the nature of University strategic plans, and specifically, why they are rarely written in a manner that feels meaningful to faculty.  Having pondered it for a few days, I thought it would be worth jotting down some ideas. The university is, in most cases, a loosely-coupled organization.  For the most part, people in Fine Arts could not care less what is going on in the Faculty of Agriculture

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October 31, 2016 9 Comments

What could a new private university in Canada look like?

Yesterday I outlined why a major private university has never emerged in Canada.  But I also suggested that it wasn’t impossible one might pop up in the future if it were backed by someone with sufficiently deep pockets and an eye for strategy.  Here is what I mean by this: For a private university to be a success, it needs to be getting thousands of students.  Say 4,000 or so.  It’s not impossible to operate below that level, but it’s precarious. 

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October 25, 2016 2 Comments

Why don’t we have private universities in Canada?

Every once in awhile I get asked a question like “why doesn’t Canada have private higher education”?  The answer is complicated, in part because the question isn’t as precise as it seems. To start, we have a lot of private higher education in Canada, but it’s at the sub-degree level.  Stats on private higher education in Canada aren’t good but the best estimates suggest that there’s something on the order of 150,000 students attending somewhere in the region of 1800

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October 24, 2016 2 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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