The World of Higher Education Podcast Listen now →

The World of Higher Education Podcast Listen now →

Category: Institutions

Needed Research on Remote Teaching

We’re only a few weeks into the term, but there are two important phenomena going on that, in a sensible world, would be the subject of urgent inquiry by all Canadian institutions. (This is not, of course, a sensible world, but I’ll get back to that at the end of the blog). The first topic is: why exactly have so many international students enrolled for remote teaching this term?  We don’t have full numbers yet, and probably won’t for awhile, but

Read More »
October 1, 2020 2 Comments

What do Strategic Plans Actually Say?

Today’s post is co-authored by Alex Usher and Michael Savage Yesterday’s blog focused on the structure of strategic plans, asking whether they are built from the mission statement backwards or from upwards from a checklist of ideas people had without looking at the overall picture?  (answer: for the most part they are built from checklists and hence are not particularly strategic, though they as planning documents they may work perfectly fine).  Today we’re going to dig into the substance of

Read More »
September 29, 2020 5 Comments

Buckets and Pillars

We’ve been working hard at HESA Towers the last couple of weeks on strategic plans (currently at Queen’s and Memorial).  One of my colleagues, Michael Savage, has been working on some comparative work on strategic plans, some of which we’ll tell you about tomorrow.  But I wanted to talk about something we’ve noticed in the way Canadian strategic plans are put together.  And that is the difference between “bucket” plans and “pillar” plans. Generally, strategic plans all contain three things. 

Read More »
September 28, 2020 1 Comment

The State of Postsecondary Education in Canada, 2020

Our annual publication, The State of Postsecondary Education in Canada, is out today.  You can read it here.  Consider it your free annual almanac of everything PSE-related in Canada.  If you have any suggestions for improvement in future years, please let me know. This is an odd year to be writing almanac-like documents.  Normally, you can look forward to future events by relying on data that are a couple of years old.  Partly, it’s from necessity, thanks to Canada’s lackadaisical

Read More »
September 16, 2020 2 Comments

Micro-credentials Need to be More than Gimmicks

If you’re one of those unfortunate people who follows the federal lobbying scene, you’ll have noticed that all of the PSE stakeholder groups, one way or another, are currently pitching micro-credentials to the feds either as “a contribution” PSE institutions are making to skills acquisition in the country (CICan) or as something the government should pay for by tacking on some kind of voucher to the CERB (Universities Canada, U15, and Polytechnics Canada).  I have three reactions to this. First,

Read More »
September 14, 2020 3 Comments
Load More

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.

Subscribe

Search Posts

Search Publications

Social Media

Linkedin Youtube Spotify

Recent Posts

More thoughts on...