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Category: History Lesson

History of Canadian PSE Part II (to 1940)

If you look at the history of Canadian post-secondary education, there are two particularly notable things going on with respect to the first four decades of the twentieth century.  The first is that western Canada got universities.  And the second is that Eastern universities entered into contracts with the state. East of Winnipeg, very few new universities were created in this period.  Newfoundland (not yet part of Canada) created Memorial University after WWI, and Mount Saint Vincent and Saint Thomas

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September 21, 2018 3 Comments

Canada’s Three Types of Colleges

If you’re in the business of trying to describe Canadian higher education, one of the hardest things to do is to try to explain Canada’s community college sector, since the institutions that comprise it vary substantially from one province to another. If one takes a historical approach, then there are, broadly speaking, three types of colleges in Canada.  There are Quebec’s CEGEPs, which are sui generis both in Canada and internationally.  Technically creatures of the 1960s, their roots go back over a

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September 17, 2018 2 Comments

History of Canadian PSE Part I (to 1900)

I decided over the summer to try to write an outline sketch of Canadian Higher Education for y’all.  Expect installments periodically. SNAPSHOT: In 1900, Canadian universities together enrolled 6,641 students.  89% were male, 11% female.  44% of students were in the Arts and Science, while 27% were in medicine, and 11% were in Engineering. *** The key to understanding Canada’s somewhat chaotic higher education system lies in understanding two key phenomena: sectarianism and federalism.  The former issue historically dominated Canadian higher education and gave

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September 7, 2018 1 Comment

Post-Soviet Higher Education

As loyal readers know, I am a big believer that Soviet Higher Education teaches some real eternal truths about our sector (see here and here in particular).  This week I’ve been reading a book of essays called 25 Years of Transformations of Higher Education Systems in Post-Soviet Countries: Reform and Continuity edited by Jeroen Huisman, Anna Smolentseva and Isak Froumin.  And although structurally it’s a bit repetitive (as any book containing 15 identically-structured essays is likely to be), it’s very much worth a read

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June 15, 2018 No Comments

Better Know a Higher Ed System: Japan (Part 1)

I haven’t done one of these in awhile and since I’m vacationing here, so it seems like it’s time. Japan is a fascinating country for any number of reasons, but one of them is that it has played technological catch-up with the west not once but twice, and in both cases very successfully.  As such, reflecting on the role universities have played sheds considerable light on what we think of as “universal truths” about the benefits of higher education. Until

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May 22, 2018 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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