Category: One Thought to Start Your Day

How UK Universities are Different

I spent a couple of days in late February in the UK at a meeting of the Higher Education Strategic Planning Association (HESPA). I found it interesting, not just because of the sessions themselves but because I actually got to understand something pretty important about how UK universities work. And friends, they do not work the way they do over here in our neck of the woods. I had noted from the outset that there wasn’t really any organization like

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Liberal Leadership Platforms

As you may have noticed, there’s a Liberal leadership vote on, with results to be announced this weekend. The conceit of today’s blog is that anyone might want to vote for a leader based on actual policy platforms rather than “electability,” so buckle up and see what it is that an improbably fourth Liberal victory might mean. So, let’s start by looking at how the leadership candidates’ platforms shape up at the broad level. All of them want to talk

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Nova Scotia’s Bill 12

Just before I went on break last week, the government of Nova Scotia introduced a new bill into the legislature, Bill 12, An Act Respecting Advanced Education and Research. It quickly became apparent that this bill had not been discussed with any way shape or form with anyone in the postsecondary community, which generally spells bad news. It also appeared to have come not from the Minister’s office, but from the Premier’s which again generally suggests if not bad news then

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How Program Closure Decisions Get Made

A lot of institutions, in reaction to recent changes are going through program closure (or in politer terms “program suspensions” which in theory means they might get resurrected at some point be revived or saved, but don’t bet the house on it). So, it’s worth going through how these decisions tend to get made. Contrary to what you might hear, “low enrollment” technically is not the reason anyone closes a program: it’s a bit more complicated than that. The real

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Ontario Election Manifestos 2025

Y’all know I do one of these for every provincial election. This one is going to be a bit different because this time out E-Day is eight days away, and next week is a scheduled off-week for the blog. As of the moment I am writing this on Tuesday afternoon, only two parties have made any commitments on postsecondary education and only one has released a fully-costed platform. So, there’s a bit of guesswork involved here. I will update the

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