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Category: Government

2026 Quebec Election Manifesto Analysis

Morning everyone. We are now six days away from an election in the province of Quebec, which the polls have pegged as being an absolute nail-biter. With five parties polling above 10%, it’s conceivable that the Parti Québécois might gain an absolute majority with less than 30% of the vote. Do not skimp on the popcorn next Monday night.  Dear reader, you will be shocked to learn that post-secondary education has received virtually no attention in this election, a fact

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September 29, 2026 No Comments

Associate EU Membership and Labour Mobility

Yesterday, I sketched out the likelihood of Canada joining the Erasmus program; now I wanted to address the issue of labour mobility. As a couple of news outlets breathlessly reported during the whole EU thing last week, a new agreement might allow Canadians to “live and work visa-free” in Europe (and vice-versa, although no one seemed to want to dwell on that). But how likely is this? So, we can’t know exactly until something is negotiated. But precedent is pretty

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September 22, 2026 No Comments

Erasmus for Canada? Not so Fast.

Everyone seems very excited about the prospect of Canada becoming an associate member of the European Union (even though “associate member” is not an actual thing in any EU statute, but whatever), and in particular are talking about the value of greater student mobility since apparently Prime Minister Carney would like Canada to join the EU’s Erasmus scheme. In the words of the world’s greatest living cartoonist, Aislin…”everybody take a valium”. Sure, everybody loves Erasmus in theory. Who could be

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September 21, 2026 2 Comments

Bad Summer Essays

Back in the early days of this blog – lo, fifteen years ago now – I used to offer an annual award for “worst back-to-school article” in which I would excoriate whichever columnist had chosen to write something incredibly lazy, cliché-ridden and wrong. I eventually stopped giving out the award because the genre went into decline (I like to think it was because of HESA’s encouragement of data-enriched discourse) but this year, unfortunately, the bad takes have returned, albeit with

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September 15, 2026 1 Comment

The Postliberal University

Hi, everyone. I’m Alex Usher, and this is the opening episode of season five of the World of Higher Education podcast. American higher education is going through some unprecedented times. Republican governments in the States and in Washington now treat universities and colleges not as partners, but as an enemy to be conquered. University presidents are as likely to be pilloried by politicians as they are to be treated as important civic leaders. And legislators seem to feel empowered to

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September 10, 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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