Category: Blogs

Taiwanese Higher Education

Taiwanese Higher Education occupies a liminal space in global academia, in much the same way it does in geopolitics. Yes, it’s a Chinese-speaking, Confucian country and so its national academic carries with it a great deal of DNA that is common to the region. At the same time, for obvious reasons, it is much less China-focused, and has much closer relations with American and other non-Asian academic cultures than the average Asian system. The result is a national educational culture

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Alex Usher on Canadian Higher Education

This is the World of Higher Education podcast. I’m Tiffany MacLennan, one of the producers of the World of Higher Education Podcast, usually a Research Associate at HESA, but currently a full-time master’s student. About two years ago, I pitched the idea of a podcast to Alex to which he said no but after a lot of consistent begging, here we are at season 2 episode 19. So far, I would say we’ve had great success with this project. We

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Higher Education in France

If you study global higher education, one of the hardest habits to shake is that of assuming isomorphism. That building over there is a university? With departments and faculties? I went to a university with departments and faculties. I therefore know exactly what s going on in there. Except that is not really true, Universities in different countries often behave in quite different ways. There are, sometimes, serious outliers. And no country’s system is more of an outlier than that of France. France have, universities,

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Malaysian Higher Education

If I asked most people to name an up-and-coming higher education system – one not from a wealthy country but perhaps from the middle-income zone – people would probably naturally speak about China. And they’d probably be right: China’s higher education system has achieved remarkable things in the half-century since it was re-constructed after the Cultural Revolution. But could you name a second? Let me give you my answer: it’s Malaysia. It’s not well-known outside the region, but in fact

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The Failed Fees Free Policy in New Zealand

New Zealand has always been a place unafraid to experiment in higher education. That’s partially because change is often easier to make in small countries (it’s easier to get everyone in a room), but also because the country itself has found innovation key to success. One of the biggest recent changes was the introduction of free first year for university students, something that was introduced by Jacinda Ardern, something we discussed with a previous guest, Dave Guerin, about a year

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