The World of Higher Education Podcast Listen now →

The World of Higher Education Podcast Listen now →

Category: One Thought to Start Your Day

Why Ottawa Can’t Do the Knowledge Economy

I have read two very interesting things in the past couple of weeks. One is Justin Ling’s excellent piece in the Toronto Star about the inner workings of the Carney PMO and what the government thinks it’s accomplishing (tl;dr: as efficient and business-like as the new PMO is, it isn’t actually trying to fix what’s broken in Ottawa because it often doesn’t know what the actual problem is). And the second is Jeffrey Ding’s excellent new book Technology and the

Read More »
October 7, 2026 No Comments

Lampedusianism at the University of Waterloo

A couple of weeks ago, I wrote about a finance and governance experiment at Concordia. Today I want to talk about one that caught some headlines over the summer; namely, the re-organization of the Faculty of Arts at the University of Waterloo. The full details of the re-organization can be found here, but the basics of it are that where the Faculty used to have fifteen departments and two “schools”, it will now just have six schools. That sounds like a

Read More »
October 6, 2026 2 Comments

Comparative Spending Statistics

Just a short one today, based on some data from the OECD in its annual Education at a Glance Report which was released last week. I won’t do a full report, as many of the post-secondary indicators are banal and predictable (Canada does well at churning out post-secondary graduates, etc., etc.). But the report does contain one intriguing set of new tables: for the first time (AFAIK), the OECD has gathered data that, in theory at least, allow for international

Read More »
October 5, 2026 No Comments

That Was the Quarter That Was, Summer 2026

Hi, all. Time for a quarterly recap of what’s been going on in higher education. You might think summer would be a quiet time for developments in higher education but a) “summer” is a geographically relative term and b) “back to school” is usually when things go bananas in the higher education world. This year was no exception. Let’s get to it. Therewas drama, as there always is, with respect to funding for higher education. In Argentina, Javier Milei continues

Read More »
September 30, 2026 No Comments

2026 Quebec Election Manifesto Analysis

Morning everyone. We are now six days away from an election in the province of Quebec, which the polls have pegged as being an absolute nail-biter. With five parties polling above 10%, it’s conceivable that the Parti Québécois might gain an absolute majority with less than 30% of the vote. Do not skimp on the popcorn next Monday night.  Dear reader, you will be shocked to learn that post-secondary education has received virtually no attention in this election, a fact

Read More »
September 29, 2026 No Comments
Load More

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...