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Category: One Thought to Start Your Day

How Bad is Student/Youth Unemployment These Days?

Interesting question. It’s a tricky answer. Let’s dive in. Let’s start by looking at the issue of unemployment – that is, the percentage of people who are in the labour market but do not have work (i.e. it excludes people who aren’t interested). Figure 1 shows unemployment rates for full-time students and non-students aged 20-24 for the past fifty years (I exclude part-time students because they are an odd and heterogenous grouping).  Figure 1: Unemployment Rates during School Months for

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January 21, 2026 2 Comments

Farewell Cakeism, Welcome Trade-offs, Effectiveness and Efficiencies

Arguably the worst thing that has happened to western society over the past few decades has been the rise of cakeism. Though he hardly invented the idea, the doctrine is linked to former UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson, through his repeated use of the phrase “my policy on cake is pro-having it and pro-eating it”. Basically, it’s the ideology of pretending trade-offs never need to be made.   I’ve recently mentioned one example of cakeism in action, namely the proposal published

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January 20, 2026 No Comments

The Three Meanings of Tenure

It has become apparent to me recently that not everyone understands the term “tenure” in quite the same way. Basically, the misunderstanding comes down to this: is tenure a very limited term which is specifically related to protections related to academic freedom? Or does it refer to the entirety of job protections that professors have acquired over the years, many of which are not related to academic freedom? The quick answer is that strictly speaking, it’s the former, but colloquially,

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January 19, 2026 2 Comments

Report Back on the National Defence Research Roundtable

You may recall that back in mid-November – on the back of some discussions that took place at the University Vice-President’s Network meeting in Victoria – HESA launched a call for a meeting in Ottawa focused on: i) how to coordinate and advance defence research in Canada, and ii) developing sector-wide advice on how Canada should structure future defence and security research investments. On December 15th, 77 people showed up in Ottawa to discuss exactly that.  Today, we are releasing National Defence Research

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January 14, 2026 1 Comment

How Canada Discusses Post-Secondary Education

We have an exciting little announcement for our BC and ON subscribers today – see the bottom of this blog for more details on ways we are supporting discussions and convening in the Canadian PSE sector. One of the things that distinguishes Canadian post-secondary education from those in other anglophone countries is – for lack of a better term – the difficulties we have in sustaining a national discourse on the sector. This matters a lot, I think. A lack

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January 13, 2026 2 Comments
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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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