The World of Higher Education Podcast Listen now →

The World of Higher Education Podcast Listen now →

Category: Administration

Cui bono?

Who owns universities?  It seems like a simple question but it’s actually deviously complex. Some universities have actual owners: globally, about two-thirds of higher-education institutions are technically private, through there is some dispute how to count institutions which are not state-owned but accept state money as operating grants (in Canada, this would include McGill).  Most analyses make a distinction between for-profit and not-for-profit institutions, and that is a useful distinction in some respects: for-profits are never particularly reputable, whereas in

Read More »
February 10, 2022 1 Comment

DIY Economic Impact Studies

If there is one thing that drives me spare about Canadian universities’ and colleges’ government relations operations, it’s their obsession with economic impact studies, and their habit of wasting tens of thousands of dollars every couple of years to do new ones.  You all need to stop.  It’s not just because no one believes any of the data (or rather, the people at whom these are aimed fully understand that since no opportunity cost analysis ever accompanies these studies, they

Read More »
February 3, 2022 No Comments

University Strategy Safari

I recently had the pleasure of reading the book Strategy Safari by Henry Mintzberg, Bruch Ahlstrand and Joseph Lampel.  It’s both an interesting overview of the history of strategic planning and a taxonomy of strategic planning styles.  Of course, I read it with a view to thinking about how planning works in universities and colleges and found it says some interesting things about how universities and colleges think about planning and where there is room for improvement. Strategy is not

Read More »
January 27, 2022 1 Comment

Tracing Laurentian’s Path Part 4 –Questions, Alternatives and Lessons

So, on January 31 last year Laurentian went into the CCAA process, thus bringing forward hundreds of millions of dollars in debts, and over the course of the next three months tore itself apart in the name of reaching solvency.  100-odd faculty were fired and a few dozen programs shut.  It was all extremely grim.  The question is: was it necessary and were there alternatives? Working backwards from the moment of insolvency, one can ask what happened and ask counterfactuals.

Read More »
January 20, 2022 4 Comments

Tracing Laurentian’s Path Part 2: External Shocks

Tracing Laurentian’s Path Part 2: External Shocks Broadly speaking, four external shocks contributed to Laurentian’s downfall.   First, the Barrie Campus and the costs associated with that experiment; second, the loss of 140 Saudi students in the summer of 2018 following the Canada-Saudi Twitter spat; third, the province’s decision to cut tuition by 10% in early 2019; and fourth, COVID.  I’ll add a fifth which was technically not a financial shock but certainly a waste of money.  Let’s go through each

Read More »
January 18, 2022 1 Comment

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...