Welcome back to the fourth edition of The Fifteen As usual, we’re taking a trip around the world of higher education to check in on the trends and stories that are shaping the sector. We’re heavy on US stories this week, but still some interesting tidbits from places as far afield as Chile, China, Spain and Norway. Enjoy!
Science makes the world go around. Even if the political world we inhabit is increasingly vibes-based rather than evidence-based, the physical world around us is becoming more driven by technology and science every day. Nowadays, science and universities are seen almost as two sides of the same coin. But it wasn’t always that way and there have been alternatives. Go back 250 years and it wasn’t at all clear that science and universities were meant for each other for laboratories were often
Welcome back to another edition of The Fifteen, with a new list of ongoing and developing stories from around the world of higher education. The ongoing internationalization controversy, increasingly commercial education offerings and a tightening funding environment are not unique to Canada, and by tracking global trends in higher ed we’re hoping to deliver a global perspective on the sector. This edition picks up the trail in Canada as usual, looks at the response to continuing demographic shifts in China
A few months ago, there was an election in the Netherlands, one in which the most seats went to was the anti-immigration Party for Freedom, or PVV led by Geert Wilders. After a few months of coalition negotiations between parties (something that is largely unknown in the anglosphere but is pretty common in Europe), a new governing majority was created that collectively agreed to a new set of priorities. One of those priorities? Cutting the living daylights out of funding
One of the many ironies about universities are its hiring processes. Universities need good teachers, and so of course they find the best researchers to fill those jobs. It was an understanding of the problematic nature of this approach that led to the creation of various activities in universities designed to assist professors in developing their craft as teachers. This in turn led to a more sophisticated understanding of teaching as merely the complement of learning, and from there it
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.
