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Category: History Lesson

Historical Higher Ed Data-Palooza (Part 1)

I found some great data yesterday! It turns out that when Statscan murders a data series, it sometimes leaves traces of the old corpse on its website.  Not anywhere you can find it through normal keyword searches or anything, but if you can find yourself an old CANSIM table number (ask your stat nerd grandparents, kids) you might just be able to dig up some truly interesting data.  Yesterday I managed to find so much historical data on Canadian higher

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April 11, 2023 2 Comments

Instrumentality

This week’s guest on The World of Higher Education Podcast is Ethan Schrum, Associate Professor of history at Asuza Pacific University in California. Ethan is the author of a very nice work called The Instrumental University: Education in the Service of the National Agenda Since World War II which puts into perspective a very important piece of the history of higher education in North America. We’re used to universities making big claims about being “essential” societal institutions, valuable tools, “instruments” for the state

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March 30, 2023 No Comments

Plus ça change

I was recently reading this great book of essays edited by Philip Altbach (if you are studying higher education and have never read Altbach, you are should immediately read everything by Altbach) entitled University Reform.  It’s a great read, in particular the introduction, which lists the nine challenges facing higher education systems around the world.  They are: Some of these nine challenges overlap a bit (for instance, “relevance” and “the changing role”) and others are linked closely (growing enrolments, financial

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February 21, 2023 No Comments

The Long Strange History of Loan Remission Policies

One thing that long marked Canada out as an oddball amongst nations in higher education policy is the reliance of its student aid systems on something called “loan remission”.  A series of recent policy moves has nearly eradicated the use of this policy tool. Loan remission is pretty simple.  Students take out a loan at the start of a year of studies and then before repayment begins some of it gets written off.  Sometimes it’s done annually, sometimes it’s done

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September 8, 2022 1 Comment

No Competition

Lately, I’ve been wondering whether we have reached some kind of dead-end in the history of universities.  Specifically, whether because of a combination of increasing regulatory control, professional conformity and institutional mission creep, we have got to a point where it has actually become impossible to imagine alternatives to the modern research university as a way of organizing post-18 education. If you look back at the history of universities, you see periodic reinventions of the form.  There was the original

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December 8, 2021 2 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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