The World of Higher Education Podcast Listen now →

The World of Higher Education Podcast Listen now →

Category: Podcast

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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March 6, 2025 1 Comment

Students on the Frontlines: The Ongoing Protests in Serbia with Jim Dickinson

If I say the word “Serbia”, chances are your mind goes to things like the NATO air attacks of 1999 and the associated Kosovo War, to the breakup of Yugoslavia and to Marshal Tito and maybe – if you’re more historically-minded – to the origins of World War I.  It probably doesn’t go to higher education or radical student politics. But that’s kind of unfortunate because in fact Serbia’s recent history has had plenty of instances where youth- or student-based

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February 20, 2025 No Comments

Data, Decisions, and Disruptions: Inside the World of University Rankings

University rankings are pretty much everywhere. Though the earliest university rankings in the U. S. date back to the early 1900s and the modern ones from the 1983 debut of the U. S. News and World Report rankings. The kind of rankings we tend to talk about now, international or global rankings, really only date back to 2003 with the creation of the Shanghai Academic Rankings of World Universities. Over the decade that followed that first publication, a triumvirate emerged

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February 13, 2025 No Comments

The Great Brain Race, 15 years later with Ben Wildavsky

Sometimes books can be time machines. A few months ago, I started re-reading Ben Wildavsky’s excellent ‘The Great Brain Race: How Global Universities are Reshaping the World‘. First published by Princeton University Press in 2010. And it took me literally to another planet. An optimistic one where higher education and globalization went hand in hand to enrich the lives of students everywhere and which powered universities to new heights of competition and discovery. When the book came out, I remember

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February 6, 2025 No Comments

Colombia’s Higher Ed Utopia or Illusion? Insights with Javier Botero

Latin America sometimes flies below the radar in discussions of global higher education. It’s too poor to have major players in the world-class universities game, but it’s too rich to be among the attention-getting new highfliers like Vietnam. And even within Latin America, not every country gets the same attention. Colombia also kind of flows below the radar, lacking the size of Mexico or Brazil, not punching above its weight like Chile, and not being stark raving tonto like Venezuela. But Colombia

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January 30, 2025 No Comments
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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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