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Category: History Lesson

The Universities of Imperial China

Today kicks-off Chinese New Year, and so I wanted to devote some time to the subject of higher education in the People’s Republic of China.  Given the immensity of the topic, the usual one-off, “Better Know a Higher Ed System” piece seemed inadequate – hence, I’ve written a series of posts, which I’ll be publishing over the next 15 days (the duration of Lunar New Year celebrations).  Enjoy. *** China is one of the few places in the world that

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January 31, 2014 2 Comments

The Changing Median Student

Unless you’ve been in some sort of cave for the last decade, you’ve probably heard conversations about students, which begin with the phrase, “Today’s students are… less engaged/less able to write/weaker at math/not as curious/not as academically inclined…”  The obvious question of “compared to when” is usually left unanswered, and depends to some extent on the age of the person doing the kvetching; solipsistically, I always assume they’re talking about 25 years ago (when I started university). Usually, the implication

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November 26, 2013 5 Comments

How Student Debt Became a Big Deal in Canada

If you go back to debates in the 1993 election, or Lloyd Axworthy’s famous Social Security “Green Paper”,  most of what you see in the discourse about PSE would be pretty familiar today: “higher tuition = less access”, etc.  But what you wouldn’t find was any discussion of student debt.  It just wasn’t something anyone talked about. Partly, this was because there wasn’t a lot of student debt at the time.  Although federal and provincial loans programs were undergoing a

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October 29, 2013 1 Comment

The Best CFS Chair Ever

I see Brad Lavigne has a new book out about his years as Jack Layton’s campaign strategist.  Time perhaps to mention his other big accomplishment: namely, being the best Chairperson the Canadian Federation of Students (CFS) ever had. The mid-1990s were an ugly time in Canadian PSE.  Federal and provincial governments were broke, and cutting back everywhere.  Partly as a result of this, the student movement polarized – a more left-wing leadership took over the organization and purged the moderates,

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October 23, 2013 2 Comments

Getting Medieval on Tuition

Here’s a great story you may have missed: at the University of Toronto, students have created their own exchanges where they can pay students who are enrolled in a class which is full to drop out, thus opening space for themselves.  In other words, a secondary market in class spaces has spontaneously emerged (as markets do). Most people’s reaction to this is either shock/horror (costs to students, more inequality, yadda yada), or mild amusement.  But I think it raises some interesting

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September 26, 2013 1 Comment

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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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