The World of Higher Education Podcast Listen now →

The World of Higher Education Podcast Listen now →

Category: Government

BC Election Manifesto Analysis 2026

I shouldn’t have to write this blog. This Saturday’s provincial election is completely unnecessary. But we’re having it anyways because the galaxy-brains around Premier Dave Eby couldn’t figure out in time that a catastrophically divided opposition might just become less catastrophically divided if faced with the threat of an imminent election.  Anyways.  This is not a good election for post-secondary education. Maybe not quite the worst I’ve ever seen in my fifteen-odd years of doing this, but it’s close. I’ll

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October 21, 2026 No Comments

New Zealand’s Higher Education Crossroads

As I think I’ve mentioned before, New Zealand has one of the most fascinating higher education policy scenes anywhere in the world. Hardly a year goes by where they aren’t making huge changes to research policy, tuition fees, student aid, or international student rules. Must be exhausting to live there. In any event, all this policy hyperactivity means this podcast often returns to New Zealand to see exactly what’s going on. And with the election coming up next month, we

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October 15, 2026 No Comments

The AfD and German Higher Education

In many ways, Germany seems like a higher education paradise. Sure, the funding might not be as generous as elsewhere and career progression can be problematic—but basically, academic freedom is highly prized, as are continental connections across Europe, and policymaking within the system is highly consensual. You can’t have everything, but that’s quite a lot. But as Germans are discovering, consensual decision-making only works if everyone agrees to the ground rules. And in recent years, a new political force has

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October 8, 2026 No Comments

Why Ottawa Can’t Do the Knowledge Economy

I have read two very interesting things in the past couple of weeks. One is Justin Ling’s excellent piece in the Toronto Star about the inner workings of the Carney PMO and what the government thinks it’s accomplishing (tl;dr: as efficient and business-like as the new PMO is, it isn’t actually trying to fix what’s broken in Ottawa because it often doesn’t know what the actual problem is). And the second is Jeffrey Ding’s excellent new book Technology and the

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October 7, 2026 No Comments

That Was the Quarter That Was, Summer 2026

Hi, all. Time for a quarterly recap of what’s been going on in higher education. You might think summer would be a quiet time for developments in higher education but a) “summer” is a geographically relative term and b) “back to school” is usually when things go bananas in the higher education world. This year was no exception. Let’s get to it. Therewas drama, as there always is, with respect to funding for higher education. In Argentina, Javier Milei continues

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September 30, 2026 No 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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