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Category: History Lesson

The Allure of the (G)Olden Days

Among the many things that drive me completely crazy about discourse in higher education is the mythologizing about “the olden days”.  You know, before “neoliberalism” came along, and research was non-instrumental, people “valued knowledge for its own sake”, classes were tiny, and managers were things that happened to other people. Whenever I hear this kind of thinking, part of me wants to say “and when was this again?” But that’s a bit flip: there is some truth to each of these claims of

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January 19, 2016 5 Comments

The Higher Education of Heads of Government

To follow up on yesterday’s musings about the educational history of Canadian Prime Ministers: I think you can tell something about a country’s social structure just by looking at the clustering of leaders’ educational backgrounds. In this exercise, I look at the records for Canadian, British, Australian, Japanese, and New Zealand Prime Ministers, German Chancellors, and French and American Presidents.  I would have included Italy but politicians’ Wikipedia bios are weirdly silent on education (even in the Italian versions).  I

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December 1, 2015 1 Comment

Canadian PMs’ Higher Education Experiences

For giggles the other night, I started looking up the educational backgrounds of various countries’ heads of government.  I’ll do the other countries tomorrow; today, I thought I’d start with Canada.  Let’s do it by the numbers. One: The number of Canadian PMs who have held PhDs.  It was McKenzie King, who earned a PhD from Harvard for his dissertation on “Oriental Immigration to Canada”. He was against it: “Canada should remain a country for the white man”, he wrote with

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November 30, 2015 5 Comments

The Nature of Universities: Multicultural Edition

I find myself increasingly annoyed with particular a line of rhetoric that academics sometimes use when they want to make a point.  “The university is not a corporation”, they say, “it is a community of scholars dedicated to the truth – if it is not that it is nothing.” You know, the Steffan Collini-types. Two things here.  First, a modern university actually is demonstrably a corporation, which is indeed a very good thing for everyone who likes to get a

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November 23, 2015 1 Comment

Golden Liberty or Rapid Collegiality?

Once upon a time, there was a land of liberty known as Poland.  While the rest of Europe was going through the counter-reformation, the Thirty Years’ War, and the beginnings of absolutism, Poland had the world’s most liberal constitution.  Nobles (who formed a rather substantial portion of the population) had the right to elect their king.  Religious freedom existed (though Catholics remained a strong majority).  The king could not declare war or peace without Parliamentary agreement (the Sejm), nor could he

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October 1, 2015 3 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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