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Category: Institutions

Every University and College Needs a Fool

OK, yes, lots of ways to complete that sentence (e.g. “Every university and college needs a fool… and mine already has several”, etc.).  But I mean this in a very literal sense.  Institutions need the equivalent of Medieval Fools, or Court Jesters, to help them combat bad institutional culture. In addition to being a barrel of laughs, Fools had a specific function in medieval and early renaissance courts; namely, they were able to speak truth to power, albeit obliquely (think Robin

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December 3, 2015 1 Comment

The Seven Habits of Highly Effective Universities and Colleges

One of the problems in higher education is that there’s a whole lot of effort expended on “who’s the best” (which, as measured by most rankings, is some function of money, age, and size), and not a lot of serious effort put into answering the question: “how can institutions get better”?  (Or at least, in finding answers that don’t boil down to: publish more/get more international students.) I get to see a fair number of universities around the world.  And

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December 2, 2015 No Comments

Beyond Tenure

Today, Higher Education Strategy Associates is releasing a paper called Beyond Tenure: Faculty Employment Protection at Canadian Universities (available here). People make a lot of fuss about tenure.  They say things like “lifetime employment, now isn’t that cushy”, etc. etc.; or, on the flip side, “tenure’s absolutely essential to protect academic freedom”, heart of the university, etc. etc.  But tenure actually isn’t a guarantee of employment come what may.  Nothing prohibits a university from letting people go if the institution is in deep

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November 26, 2015 No Comments

Class Size, Teaching Loads, and that Curious CUDO Data Redux

You may recall that last week I posted some curious data from CUDO, which suggested that the ratio of undergraduate “classes” (we’re not entirely sure what this means) to full-time professors in Ontario was an amazingly-low 2.4 to 1.  Three quick follow-ups to that piece. 1.  In the previous post, I offered space on the blog to anyone involved with CUDO who could clear up the mystery of why undergraduate teaching loads appeared to be so low.  No one has taken

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November 24, 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

One Thought to Start Your Day

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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