The World of Higher Education Podcast Listen now →

The World of Higher Education Podcast Listen now →

Category: Governance

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

Read More »
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

Read More »
October 8, 2014 2 Comments

Too Big to Fail?

Here’s a serious question: are universities too big to fail?  And if so, what are the consequences of that? If we had a fully public system, with tight government oversight on budgets, and no deficit spending – sort of like what much of continental Europe has – this wouldn’t be an issue.  By definition, public institutions couldn’t fail (though presumably a government would be free to close an institution should it wish to do so).   But the existence of institutional

Read More »
October 2, 2014 1 Comment

Deans and Multiple Personality Disorders

Imagine two scenarios.  In the first, an academic is threatened with termination if he/she speaks out publicly against the university’s proposed strategic plan.  In the second, a manager is fired for disobeying a direct order from a superior about running down the company he/she works for.  For most readers, I’d guess the first scenario is abhorrent, and the second quite understandable (if perhaps somewhat harsh).  Yet both scenarios describe precisely what happened to University of Saskatchewan’s Dean, Robert Buckingham. The

Read More »
May 16, 2014 12 Comments

The Listening Tour

There’s a little management technique gaining some traction called the “Listening Tour”.  In the US, over the past eighteen months, new Presidents at Carnegie Mellon and James Madison have used this to inaugurate their terms.  At Princeton, new President (and erstwhile Provost) Chris Eisgruber decided to embark on an entire “Year of Listening”, though why he needs a whole year when he’s been provost for the past nine is unclear.  Here at home, the pioneer of this is new Dalhousie

Read More »
January 15, 2014 8 Comments

One Thought to Start Your Day

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.

Subscribe

Search Posts

Search Publications

Social Media

Linkedin Youtube Spotify

Recent Posts

More thoughts on...