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Category: One Thought to Start Your Day

Comparing Student Loan Outcomes

Yesterday, I said that the system of English student loans were the worst in the world. And I know the skeptical among you probably thought “how can he say that? Where is the comparative data?” So, today, some data on student loans programs around the world which will show, definitively, how awful the English system is. Let’s start with a basic piece of contextual data, which is that there are huge differences between countries when it comes to the percentage

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March 25, 2026 1 Comment

The World’s Worst Student Loan System

If you read the UK education press at all, you’ll have noticed a serious uptick recently in the number of stories describing the current student loan system as “a scam” by  Government back-bench MPs and “a mess” by a former Deputy PM who played a large role in designing it. What’s going on, you ask? How bad is it? Well.. The problem with student finance in the UK is that Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, in their haste to modernize

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March 24, 2026 1 Comment

A Thought on the Iran War

So, somehow, President Prince of Peace has got the United States into a shooting war with Iran, and, in a development NO ONE COULD HAVE POSSIBLY FORESEEN, Iran has retaliated in part by attacking American allies around the Persian Gulf. Although it is about an eight-tier priority right now, one of the questions the war is raising right now: what is the fate of the United Arab Emirates’ international education industry? Can Dubai, and the region as a whole, regain a reputation

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March 23, 2026 1 Comment

The Crux

One of my favourite authors on strategy is Richard Rummelt, author of Good Strategy, Bad Strategy, which I highly recommend to anyone. He has a newish book (2022) out called The Crux which I read a few weeks ago. Today, I want to talk about it in relation to higher education. The thesis of this book, as the name suggests, is that too often strategy does not create an organizational improvement because it does not deal squarely with the key problems that the organization actually

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March 18, 2026 3 Comments

The Awkward Phase

It’s been interesting for us sitting around the edges of the new relationship between the federal government and the post-secondary community around security issues and watching two sides size each other up. Today, some thoughts on the matter and suggestions to speed up the process. So, let’s start with the internal challenges the two sides have in forging a relationship. On the Government of Canada side, it’s very much the case that the various players in the game are not on

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March 17, 2026 No 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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