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Category: Media

Times Higher Rankings, Weak Methodologies, and the Vastly Overblown “Rise of Asia”

I’m about a month late with this one (apologies), but I did want to mention something about the most recent version of the Times Higher Education (THE) Rankings.  You probably saw it linked to headlines that read, “The Rise of Asia”, or some such thing. As some of you may know, I am inherently suspicious about year-on-year changes in rankings.  Universities are slow-moving creatures.  Quality is built over decades, not months.  If you see huge shifts from one year to

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October 30, 2014 7 Comments

Responsibility-Centred Budgeting

As I’m on the subject of finances and budgeting these days, I thought it a good time to bring up the topic of “responsibility-centred budgeting” (RCB).  It’s a timely topic, given both this ludicrous article in the Edmonton Journal last week, and the fact that I have one loyal reader who’s been urging me to write about it for months now (Hi, Alan!). Responsibility-centred budgeting basically says that units (usually faculties, occasionally departments) are responsible for raising their own funds and covering

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October 28, 2014 22 Comments

The Problem with Global Reputation Rankings

I was in Athens this past June, at an EU-sponsored conference on rankings, which included a very intriguing discussion about the use of reputation indicators that I thought I would share with you. Not all rankings have reputational indicators; the Shanghai (ARWU) rankings, for instance, eschew them completely.  But QS and Times Higher Education (THE) rankings both weight them pretty highly (50% for QS, 35% for THE).  But this data isn’t entirely transparent.  THE, who release their World University Rankings

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September 30, 2014 3 Comments

Back to School 2014

Morning, all.  Ready for the new school year run-down? One thing already clear is that pretty much the whole sector has finally come to grips with the reality that annual 4% increases in funding aren’t coming back any time soon. That’s causing institutions to think more strategically than they’ve had to in a long time, which is a Good Thing – the downside is that there appears to be some places where this hard thinking is leading to some fairly

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August 25, 2014 No Comments

Coursera Continues to Confuse

The big news Monday was that Coursera, MOOC provider extraordinaire, had a bit of a re-shuffle at the top.  Founders Daphne Koller and Andre Ng, and erstwhile President Laila Ibrahim, were joined by former Yale President Rick Levin, who is now the company’s CEO.  This, needless to say, got everyone quite excited.  A Big Name Has Joined Coursera!  It must mean… well, what does it mean, exactly? Coursera is a company which – from a growth point-of-view – has two huge positives

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March 27, 2014 2 Comments

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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