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Category: Universities

Rankings Touchiness (Part 1)

The last decade or so has seen a lot of brouhaha about rankings, especially those of the global variety.  Loads of books have been written about how rankings are driving consumerism in higher education (mostly an anglo-American complaint, it should be said), and how they are altering (for the worse) policy-making in the sector. But one question which, to my knowledge, has not been addressed, is this: if rankings are so god-awful, why is higher education the only sector that

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February 5, 2013 3 Comments

The Greek Choice

University World News ran an interesting piece the other day.  Apparently, the Greek government, as part of its continuing search for money, has devised a brilliant idea to get funds from the higher ed sector.  It’s going to close four universities, and reduce the size of the incoming class by about 30%. Well, that’s sure one way to do it.  Apparently, tuition fees weren’t considered – I’m not entirely sure why it wasn’t; it’s not as though they’re verboten in

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February 4, 2013 No Comments

UK Tuition Hikes Revisited

To recap: in 2012, average English tuition fees rose by 158% to roughly £8500, with no corresponding increase in grants.  As we’ve seen previously, this resulted in a fall in English applications of about 8%.  The effect was not evenly distributed among all groups: among 18 year-olds, the drop was 1-2% (depending on what base you use), whilst among applicants over 19, the decrease was 15-20%. But of course, it’s never best to rely on one year of data, especially

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January 31, 2013 1 Comment

Rough Times at ST. FX

I’ve been saying for awhile now that falling government revenue and rising faculty salary expectations have made a really knock-down drag-em-out faculty strike somewhere in Canada – the kind that knocks out an entire semester – almost inevitable.  The one that started Monday at Nova Scotia’s St. Francis Xavier University may not last that long, but boy does it look ugly. Basically, the dispute appears to be as follows: Management is offering somewhere between a 6 and 7% salary increase

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January 30, 2013 No Comments

The Monash-Warwick Alliance

About fifteen months ago, I wrote that the next big thing in cross-border higher education was going to be an actual merger of two institutions, in different countries.  Now, we have a real live experiment to watch, thanks to the Monash-Warwick Alliance. This didn’t get a lot of press when it was announced (I certainly missed it), but it’s a reasonably big deal nonetheless.  In a nutshell, these two large, young  universities (Monash dates from 1958, Warwick from 1964), with

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January 28, 2013 2 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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