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Category: Blogs

Massification and its Unacknowledged Trade-offs

The following is an adaptation of a speech I gave at the Justus Liebig University in Giessen, Germany last week. My thanks to the University’s President Dr. Professor Katherina Lorenz for inviting me to give the talk. Across what we used to call the developed world, there are, at the moment, many things that are driving tensions between universities and society. There’s no single cause but rather a confluence of factors, and the exact mix of factors changes a bit country-by country. I’m

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December 1, 2025 1 Comment

The Fifteen: November 28, 2025

Welcome to The Fifteen, a global round-up of the stories animating higher education institutions and systems around the globe. Let’s get to it. 1. To Pyongyang, for a story about how a tightly-controlled, top-down, secretive admissions process leads to a system of rampant bribery, with parents paying party officials both for information and to get their children’s high schools added to the lists of potential admissions at the “right” universities. 2. Panjab University in Chandigarh is in a battle over its autonomy, and it

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November 28, 2025 No Comments

Funding, Free Riding, and the Future of Canadian Science

Ever since World War II science — that is, state funded science — and economic progress have been seen to go hand in hand. And for the most part, governments have been happy to let scientists themselves decide where much of the money goes. But things have been changing lately, and not just in the United States, where the Trump administration has awarded itself the right to involve itself in any science award for any reason. Several countries, notably Australia

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November 27, 2025 1 Comment

The New Decliners

Morning all. Next week, we will be launching The World of Higher Education – Year in Review 2025, which is our new global equivalent to The State of Post-Secondary Education in Canada. As a document, it’s less data-driven and somewhat more narrative-driven than what you might be used to from HESA, but we think that you’ll enjoy it. And, as a treat today, I wanted to show you some of the data, specifically on enrolment, which suggests that big changes

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November 26, 2025 No Comments

Factors Changing the Face of Global Student Mobility

The following is an adaptation of a talk I gave at the Conference of the Americas on International Education (CAEI), sponsored by the Inter-American Organization for Higher Education (IOHE), in San José, Costa Rica last month. My thanks to David Julien and the organizers for the invitation. There is a lot of armchair quarterbacking when it comes to international student flows. There are some consultants – and some media outlets out there – who think it’s possible to predict these flows, but

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November 25, 2025 1 Comment

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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