The World of Higher Education Podcast Listen now →

The World of Higher Education Podcast Listen now →

Category: Universities

History of Canadian PSE Part I (to 1900)

I decided over the summer to try to write an outline sketch of Canadian Higher Education for y’all.  Expect installments periodically. SNAPSHOT: In 1900, Canadian universities together enrolled 6,641 students.  89% were male, 11% female.  44% of students were in the Arts and Science, while 27% were in medicine, and 11% were in Engineering. *** The key to understanding Canada’s somewhat chaotic higher education system lies in understanding two key phenomena: sectarianism and federalism.  The former issue historically dominated Canadian higher education and gave

Read More »
September 7, 2018 1 Comment

Canadian University Finances 2016-17 (Income)

So, the 2016-2017 Financial Information of Universities and Colleges came out in July, and as usual I’ve got some highlights for you. This year, we’ll be doing this as a two-parter, one on income (today) and one on expenditure (tomorrow). For those of you looking for data on community college expenditures, I’m afraid you’ll have to wait a few months – Statscan typically doesn’t release that data until December (but rest assured I will cover it when the time comes).

Read More »
September 4, 2018 No Comments

Management (or Lack Thereof)

[the_ad id=”12740″] There are steady complains about over-management or micro-management in universities.  And, sometimes, there’s a lot of truth to the complaints.  But I argue that in North America, there’s a pretty good case that universities are under-managed, and that an awful lot of the sector’s problems can be traced to under-management. When it comes to management, North American universities are quite different than, say, Australian and UK ones.  To over-generalize only a little bit, we only manage the institutions;

Read More »
June 21, 2018 4 Comments

Post-Soviet Higher Education

As loyal readers know, I am a big believer that Soviet Higher Education teaches some real eternal truths about our sector (see here and here in particular).  This week I’ve been reading a book of essays called 25 Years of Transformations of Higher Education Systems in Post-Soviet Countries: Reform and Continuity edited by Jeroen Huisman, Anna Smolentseva and Isak Froumin.  And although structurally it’s a bit repetitive (as any book containing 15 identically-structured essays is likely to be), it’s very much worth a read

Read More »
June 15, 2018 No Comments

A Taxonomy of Private Universities

When people hear the words “private higher education”, most North Americans’ imaginations immediately jump to one of two mental images: prestigious Ivy League universities, or predatory chains of private colleges like ITT Technical Institutes or Corinthian Colleges or something like that.  But private higher education globally is actually more varied than this.  Let’s take a quick tour. Prestigious Private Non-Profits.  These are your Harvards, your Stanfords, your MITs.  Outside the United States, these are pretty rare: Japan has a few (Waseda, Keio), and there

Read More »
June 13, 2018 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.

Subscribe

Search Posts

Search Publications

Social Media

Linkedin Youtube Spotify

Recent Posts

More thoughts on...