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Category: Governance

Clearer Thinking About Student Unions

Student associations have difficulty being effective, what with leadership turnovers over every year or so, and corporate memories that rarely extend beyond 36 months.  But every once in awhile, either because of some astute hires, or a lucky co-incidence of good leaders being elected at the same time, a student group gets on a hot streak.  StudentsNS, which represents the majority of associations in Nova Scotia, is in that zone right now. The latest evidence: their recent review of governance

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February 27, 2015 No Comments

Performance-Based Funding (Part 3)

As I noted yesterday, the American debate on PBF has more or less ignored evidence from beyond its shores; and yet, in Europe, there are several places that have very high levels of performance-based funding.  Denmark has had what it calls a “taximeter” system, which pays institutions on the basis of student progression and completion, for over 20 years now, and it currently makes up about 30% of all university income.  Most German Länder have some element of incentive-based funding

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February 19, 2015 3 Comments

Some Interesting New Models of Student Representation

Historically, the development of student movements has been heavily linked with nationalism, anti-colonialism, modernity, and the development of the welfare state (i.e. they were pro all four of those).  However, as higher education has become massified around the world, students have by and large become less concerned with larger social issues, and more concerned with narrower, student-based concerns.  That hasn’t always led to a loss of radicalism (viz. the carré rouge), but it’s broadly true that over time student leadership

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January 16, 2015 1 Comment

Canadian College Athletics

Morning, all. Good holidays? I spent a part of my break in Venice, California (when not writing about higher education, I am in fact The Dude). What hits you full in the face when in the US at this time of year is the ubiquity of college football. I could regale you with tales of US college athletics, but others do it far better than I could: I recommend Charles Clotfelter’s Big-time Sports at American Universities, or if you’re looking

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January 5, 2015 No Comments

The War Between Universities and Disciplines

From the outside, universities look like a single united entity, with many administrative subdivisions – kind of the organizational equivalent of the United States.  However, the closer political analogy is actually early 1990s Yugoslavia: at a very basic level, universities are the sites of permanent civil wars between central authorities and the disciplines whose interests they purportedly serve. Disciplines – which, except for law and theology, mostly started their existence outside universities – allowed themselves to be subsumed within universities

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October 8, 2014 4 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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