The World of Higher Education Podcast Listen now →

The World of Higher Education Podcast Listen now →

Category: Governance

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

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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

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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

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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

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June 1, 2023 2 Comments

Economies of Scale and the Unmanageability of Universities

I’ve recently had reason to ponder some of the mysteries of university management.  I’ve concluded that it’s much harder to run a university in a moderately efficient fashion than it is to run pretty much any other type of organization.  And I say this not because of the multiple veto- (or at least go-slow) points that get set up through the process of academic governance, but rather simply because disciplinary structures stand in the way of most useful economies of

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May 31, 2023 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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