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Category: One Thought to Start Your Day

The Canada Student Grant Cut

Somewhat remarkably, no media have picked up the story that the Canada Student Grants were slashed in last week’s budget. Possibly, this is because the government did not issue a press release saying in big letters, “HEY, WE ARE LOADING MORE DEBT ON LOW-INCOME STUDENTS”, and, without such an admission, no one wants to do the hard work of working out what just is going on.   So, let me save everyone the trouble. Here’s what happened: In the 2019 election,

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November 10, 2025 No Comments

Budget Commentary 2025

Hi all. Budget Day was yesterday, and it was a doozy. The HESA Towers team worked late into the night putting together our usual Budget Commentary for you to peruse at your leisure. We hope you enjoy it. But if you haven’t the time to read it in full, here are the five big takeaways. First, although large spending cuts were previewed, the cuts that occurred could not prevent the government from racking up a budget which in real terms was similar to the

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November 5, 2025 4 Comments

A Strategic Plan Typology

I have spent a few days recently reviewing new strategic plans at global top 200 universities (partly because of some talks I am giving in China and India this month, and partly because, as I mentioned yesterday, there’s a section on “what’s new in strategic plans” in our new World of Higher Education – Year in Review, out December 4th!). As a result of all this pondering, I think I have come up with a typology of sorts, which I

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November 4, 2025 No Comments

Utrecht, Georgetown, Manchester

I’ve been poking around a lot of university websites from around the globe recently – mainly but not exclusively because I’m putting the finishing touches to The World of Higher Education – Year in Review (due out December 4th and it’s going to be great). And, in the course of all this poking around, I have found a few little gems of institutional initiatives which I found particularly intriguing.  The kinds of things that make you wonder: why don’t more

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November 3, 2025 1 Comment

Some Thoughts on the Use of AI in Teaching

I spent part of last week in Tempe at Arizona State University’s conference on Agentic AI and the Student Experience, which was a pretty interesting event. It made me think awhile about AI in higher education, which I thought I’d share with y’all. My POV on this basically comes down to six things: That last one is the most important. I’ll expand on it.  Higher education, being as near to eternal as any institution can be, constantly lives with technological changes. In

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October 29, 2025 2 Comments

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.

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