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Category: Institutions

Observations and Suggestions about Boards of Governors

 Today, a few random observations about University and College Boards of Governors, based on some thinking prompted by a class talk I gave at OISE last week and some noodling about Bill 12 in Nova Scotia. I have three thoughts and three propositions.  1) Boards of Governors Have Complicated Job Descriptions  Formally, the role of Boards is pretty clear. They choose institutional leadership, set (or at least approve) institutional priorities and—this one is the most important—they oversee institutional finances to make

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March 24, 2025 No Comments

The Future of Equity, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) in Canadian Higher Education

Two months ago, there was some thought that Trump’s big anti-DEI agenda might “embolden” a future Poilievre government into doing something similar in Canada. Looking at recent polls, this seems a tad hasty: deprived of Trudeau as a foil and faced with a national emergency that can’t be solved with infantile three-word slogans, Dimestore Pat Buchanan’s odds of leading the CPC to a sweeping victory seem more remote by the day. But there is something deeper at work here, too: namely,

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March 18, 2025 No Comments

Nobody is Coming to Save Us, But…

You may have heard me say once or twice that “nobody is coming to save us.” I’ve been told that this has become something of a catchphrase in Canadian universities over the past year, so much so that I kind of wish we’d done merch with that slogan. The phrase is still true; in fact, given the metastasizing national security crisis, it’s arguably truer now than it was a year ago. But given the chaos south of the border, it

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March 17, 2025 5 Comments

HESA’s AI Observatory: What’s new in higher education (March 16, 2025)

Spotlight Wow. It’s already been a week since AI-CADEMY, and I’m still hung up on all the vibrant discussions that happened in Calgary, the insights shared by all, and the palpable eagerness to learn and collaborate. If you haven’t already, make sure to read Alex’s Wednesday blog for a quick summary (and if you attended, there are more post-event follow-ups coming your way soon) – but on a more personal note, I want to express how much of a privilege

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March 16, 2025 No Comments

How UK Universities are Different

I spent a couple of days in late February in the UK at a meeting of the Higher Education Strategic Planning Association (HESPA). I found it interesting, not just because of the sessions themselves but because I actually got to understand something pretty important about how UK universities work. And friends, they do not work the way they do over here in our neck of the woods. I had noted from the outset that there wasn’t really any organization like

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March 9, 2025 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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