The World of Higher Education Podcast Listen now →

The World of Higher Education Podcast Listen now →

Category: Governance

Representing Students: Crisis Edition

The three of us are ex-student leaders. And we’ve been thinking a bit lately about how student leaders can meet the present moment in higher education. One of us vividly remembers the meeting which formalized the creation of the Canadian Alliance of Student Associations (CASA) thirty years ago this week in Fredericton, New Brunswick (you can easily guess which of us it was because the other two weren’t born yet). To a significant extent, CASA defined itself in opposition to

Read More »
January 29, 2025 3 Comments

Europe/ Canada: Same/ Different

Good morning from the Brussels-to-Paris Eurostar, where I am hanging out with the good folks of the University Vice-Presidents’ Network on our study trip to Belgium and France. We’ve had some excellent meetings, including a really fascinating visit to KU Leuven (one seriously well-run university), and a chance to catch up with some old friends at the European Universities Association. And I just wanted to pass along some of the similarities and differences I am seeing between Europe and Canada right

Read More »
May 1, 2024 1 Comment

“Whatever It Is, I’m Against It: Resistance to Change in Higher Education” with Brian Rosenberg

 Hello, I’m Alex Usher, and this is the World of Higher Education podcast. One paradox of higher education that holds more or less true around the world is that while universities are charged with inventing the future, pushing boundaries, and aspiring contrarian and sometimes radical ideas, they’re also extremely conservative when it comes to their own affairs. Change does not come naturally to them anywhere in the world. Today my guest is Brian Rosenberg, a former president of Macalester University

Read More »
January 18, 2024 1 Comment

Strategy Should Hurt: Ways to Make it Bearable

Long-time readers will know my views about the difference between strategies and strategic plans.  A strategy is a course of action, a set of beliefs about how to succeed.  A plan is, above all else, a list of goals to achieve over a given period.  One does not require the other.  Sometimes plans can change from one edition to the other with no change in actual strategy (though bits of meta-strategy – vision, mission, etc. – get some light editing

Read More »
November 14, 2023 1 Comment

University Governance in Canada: Navigating Complexity

As the title of this podcast implies, this show is meant to cover as broad a swathe of higher education across the Globe. To make room for all that, we mostly stay away from Canadian topics (you get enough of that on the blog anyway). But today we’re going to change things up a bit in order to talk about one of my favorite books of 2022. Last fall, a quartet of Canadian higher education scholars – Julia Eastman, Olivier

Read More »
June 1, 2023 2 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...