Category: Blogs

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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The Fifteen: March 7, 2025

Welcome back to another issue of The Fifteen. Read stories from expanding higher education markets like Egypt, India, and Nigeria, as well as from ones facing some different challenges, such as Lithuania, Korea and Italy, plus: important news out of the increasingly beleaguered American higher education sector. Happy reading. 1. In 2008, the Lumina Foundation set a goal of 60% attainment rate for post-secondary education in the US by 2025. Today 55% of American adults hold some type of higher-ed

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Why Boycott? Maya Wind on the Case Against Israeli Universities

Over the past few years, calls for the boycott of Israeli universities have grown louder. This discourse generally entwines two different sets of arguments. The first is an argument about the effectiveness or validity of academic boycotts.  The second, because it’s Israel, is about whether Israeli universities are being unfairly targeted due to anti-Semitism. Curiously, what Israeli universities themselves might have specifically done to deserve is often relegated to an afterthought. My guest today is Maya Wind. She is an

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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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