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Category: Institutions

There Is Such A Thing As A Dumb Question

You may have seen a story last week from CBC about the New Brunswick provincial government wanting to slash $35-50M from post-secondary funding this year. The story was actually about four days old when the CBC ran it – l’Acadie Nouvelle had all the goods the previous Friday based on one quite astonishing piece of paper that the Minister of Post-Secondary Education, Training and Labour circulated to university Presidents at a meeting two weeks ago. Here’s the picture L’Acadie Nouvelle

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March 2, 2026 2 Comments

Skills for Sovereignty

Hi everyone. The blog is off this week, but given the release of the Defence Industrial Strategy, it seems worth flagging a few early observations – and providing an update on how this is shaping the agenda for our upcoming session of the National Defence Research Roundtable, which is focused on the role of post-secondary institutions in developing skills as part of a new approach to sovereignty and national security. So, the Defense Industrial Strategy (DIS) is finally out. I

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February 24, 2026 No Comments

Ontario Status Quo Ante

Thursday morning, Ontario’s Minister of Colleges and Universities made a very big funding announcement: $6.4 billion in new funding over four years. It was certainly a welcome announcement, but as my analysis below shows, it’s not a magic cure by any means, and there is a big sting in the tail of the announcement for students. The fundamentals of the announcement are that the provincial government announced that it was going to provide universities and colleges with three big new

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February 17, 2026 No Comments

Higher Education Beyond the Public Good

The last decade or so has seen enormous changes in world politics. It’s also seen some major changes the way governments relate to higher education, particularly in the anglosphere. For many, it’s been a polycrisis on top of a polycrisis – a multi-directional series of attacks on and challenges to the public standing of higher education at the exact moment when the socio-political underpinnings of the entire post-war settlement seems to be crumbling. Sounds like a pretty good subject for a book,

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February 12, 2026 No Comments

Change Challenge

Roughly 93 years ago, Franklin D. Rosevelt began his inaugural address thus: “Let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself–nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance. In every dark hour of our national life a leadership of frankness and vigor has met with that understanding and support of the people themselves which is essential to victory.”   Increasingly, I am coming to believe something pretty similar

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February 10, 2026 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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