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Category: Universities

No Disruption Here, Folks

Dear God, save us from Margaret Wente. Someone handed her a copy of Clayton Christensen’s new book and the rest of us got this ludicrous piece of nonsense in our Saturday paper. This has to be the worst meme in higher education this year. I know I’ve gone off on this before, but just to re-iterate: There. Is. No. Great. Disruption. Coming. In. Higher. Education. Period. Yes, there are some very interesting educational experiments going on out there. But does

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February 8, 2012 4 Comments

Distinct Missions

Why are Canadian universities so scared of acting differently from one another?  Why does no one want a niche? I’m not just talking about their cookie-cutter mission statements here, which seem to involve adding the words “research” and “excellence” to the output of a random word generator. I’m talking about the cookie-cutter ways they go about their daily business. In marketing-speak: they have little or no brand personality. It’s not as though cool niche missions are that hard to dream

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January 25, 2012 No Comments

Applicant Surveys We’d Like to See

I’ve always been a bit intrigued by the continuing popularity of Applicant Surveys. What is it that people expect to see in this year’s results that weren’t there last year? There are basically three sets of research questions that are at the heart of current applicant surveys: who is applying (i.e., the social/ethnic composition), what information tools are students using to acquire information about institutions, and what do students say they are looking for in an institution? The “who applies”

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January 17, 2012 1 Comment

A University of the North?

Every so often, the idea of a “University of the North/Arctic” pops up. Last month, it was the new Yukon Premier making the case for one. A lot of the rhetoric around the idea of a northern university has been along the lines of “other northern countries have them and it’s embarrassing that we don’t” (the Walter Gordon Foundation has issued a cute map to make this point visually). Let’s ignore the facts that (i) the Walter Gordon map includes

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December 13, 2011 2 Comments

College Tuition: More than you Think

It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single student in possession of a modest fortune pursues studies at college, not university. If it is so, it is because of another truth universally acknowledged: that college is cheaper than university. Or is it? While Statistics Canada does a bang-up job collecting university tuition and fee data, weighting them carefully by enrolment patterns and reporting averages by province, level and discipline, no such mechanism exists for college studies. In fairness, the

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December 2, 2011 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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