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Category: Internationalization

That Was the Quarter that Was – Winter 2026

Morning, all. It being the first of April, it’s time for a quick look at the past three months of higher education stories from around the world. Let’s take a brief look at the issues that preoccupied the sector worldwide. The most important story of the last few months, obviously, is happening in Iran and the Persian Gulf. The year began with the regime massacring thousands of citizens, including hundreds of students on the night of January 8/9. After 40

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April 1, 2026 No Comments

Higher Education Diplomacy

I had been noodling for a couple of weeks about how nation states use higher education as a soft power tool, when all of a sudden last Saturday morning stuff starts popping up in my feed about how Canada and India have just announced a joint “Talent Strategy” as part of Prime Minister Carney’s visit to India over the weekend. This announcement was so weak and superficial, I thought I should write a little bit about it, just to show how

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March 4, 2026 No Comments

Rays of Optimism, Paths Forward

Last Thursday and Friday, HESA held our Re: University conference in Ottawa. It achieved what we wanted it to achieve – to get people to have hard, tough conversations about what’s ahead and how to deal with the still-growing threat to Canadian universities. Today, I want to clue everyone in on a couple of highlights and meditate on a way forward. The opening session, with RBC’s John Stackhouse and two former Ontario premiers, Dalton McGuinty and Bob Rae, was in

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February 3, 2026 2 Comments

Transnational Strategy Now

The world of transnational education – that is, the provision of education in one country by universities based abroad – is getting very interesting these days. In particular, branch campuses have returned to the centre of the industry’s activities in a way they have not been for well over a decade. Canada’s post-secondary system – which has always been a laggard in this area – risks getting left even further behind, unless institutions up their game substantially in the next

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January 28, 2026 No Comments

Factors Changing the Face of Global Student Mobility

The following is an adaptation of a talk I gave at the Conference of the Americas on International Education (CAEI), sponsored by the Inter-American Organization for Higher Education (IOHE), in San José, Costa Rica last month. My thanks to David Julien and the organizers for the invitation. There is a lot of armchair quarterbacking when it comes to international student flows. There are some consultants – and some media outlets out there – who think it’s possible to predict these flows, but

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November 25, 2025 1 Comment
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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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