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Category: Institutions

Moneyball

I was at a conference last week in Italy, much of which focused around the use of data in institutional decision-making (technically it was a conference on rankings, but increasingly rankings are being seen as a data source for institutional benchmarking and strategizing rather than as a consumer tool, so there was a lot of overlap). One of the most interesting presentations involved a lot of discussion on the sheer amount of data now available on institutional performance (which, depending

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May 14, 2019 2 Comments

Breadth of Quality vs. Concentrations of Excellence

There was a time, perhaps twenty years ago, when the whole world wanted the American system of higher education.  The United States had the world’s most buoyant economy and a booming tech market, all apparently underpinned by a great, meritocratic system of universities.  Imitating it was the central if not fully-stated goal of China’s 985 program, Japan’s “Big Bang”, Germany’s Excellence Initiative and half a dozen other major national higher education systems. At the heart of most of these plans

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May 2, 2019 No Comments

The End of the Heisei Era

At about 3 AM tomorrow, Eastern Daylight time, Japanese Emperor Akihito will abdicate the Chyrsanthemum Throne in favour of his son, Naruhito. With that, the Heisei Era will end and the Reiwa Era will begin (time in Japan being marked by Imperial reigns; after their death, emperors become known by the “reign names”, which is why we know refer to Emperor Hirohito as the Showa Emperor and yes this does go all go back to Han-era China, why do you

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April 29, 2019 No Comments

If Canada Were Serious About Higher Education (Part 3)

Yesterday, we considered how provincial governments could get serious about higher education.  Today, I want to start talking about institutions can get serious about their most important function: teaching. When it comes to provincial goal setting and making institutions accountable, measurement is the key to improvement.  I am not convinced this is entirely the case with teaching, because frankly no one knows how to measure it holistically.  There are things that can be learned by having students write tests like

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April 10, 2019 No Comments

If Canada Were Serious About Higher Education (Part 1)

Canada is a vast and largely self-satisfied land.  And when it comes to higher education, we do pretty well.  Depending on the measure of access one chooses, we’re either above average or top of the pack.  We have the biggest and best-funded college system in the world, one which is highly regarded for its innovativeness.  On research, we punch at or above our weight.  Our faculty – the full-time ones, anyway – are the best-paid of any in the world

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April 8, 2019 3 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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