Category: Governance

Because it’s 2023

Morning everyone and welcome back.  I want to alert everyone to a bit of a shift in the way the team here at HESA Towers is handling the blog.  As you know, we have been trialing a podcast these last few weeks (there’s a great one with Alma Maldonado-Maldonado of Mexico’s CINEVSTAV this Thursday).  Later this month, the podcast format will change a bit and become a regular weekly feature focusing specifically on global higher education.  The regular blog will

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Sayonara 2022

Morning all.  This is the final blog of 2022: service resumes January 9th.  When I do a send-off blog, it’s worth thinking about the year past and asking: what should we remember about this year and what do we expect from the year ahead? To my mind, there are really two big stories from 2022.  The first has to do with Laurentian University, which was still the scene of considerable intrigue as evidence gradually mounted that its then-President, Robert Haché,

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Laurentian (Really the Last This Time)

OK, I thought this was all over with the AG’s report.  But on Monday the very last shoe dropped, so here I am again.   What happened?  Well, you may recall that in the initial affidavit submitted by Laurentian to the Companies Creditor Protection Act (CCAA) proceedings, two exhibits – labelled “EEE” and “FFF” – were kept sealed from the public.  The former was a letter from the Minister of Colleges and Universities, Ross Romano, to Laurentian University, dated 21 January

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University Governance in Canada

If you’ve been in any senior university administrator’s offices in the last few weeks, there’s a good chance you’ll have seen a paperback with vaguely constructivist art cover entitled University Governance in Canada: Navigating Complexity by the scholarly quartet of Julia Eastman, Glen Jones, Claude Trottier and Olivier Bégin-Caouette.  Within administrative circles, it’s getting a lot of buzz and praise for being an accurate portrait of the state of Canadian higher education in the early 2020s.  On balance, I think

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The Age of Volatility

Morning all.  Yes, the summer is over and classes are returning, but fortunately your daily intake of higher education commentary/snark/contrarianism is back as well.  I missed you guys, too. Anyways, welcome to the 2022-23 academic year.  This was supposed to be the year we got back to “normal”.  And the occasional campus mask mandate aside (which I fully approve), on the surface maybe this year will feel a bit 2019-ish.  But if you look underneath the hood, things are not

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