Category: Politics

The Far Future

Occasionally, I get asked about why higher education will look like in forty or fifty years.  I usually beg off this kind of thing because predictions over that length of time aren’t very meaningful.  I mean, will AI have an effect?  Of course it will.  Can I predict what it is?  Of course not.  Don’t be ridiculous. And yet.  There are a couple of important things that we can say, with little fear of contradiction, about the future environment in

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The Alberta Problem

Last week, the good folks of Alberta elected a United Conservative Party government for the next four years.  What does that mean for post-secondary education?  First, I think it’s a pretty good bet that – on the university side at least – we will continue to see more episodes of culture war nonsense along the lines of what we saw in Lethbridge last year.  Universities are kind of the epitome of the “effete lefty” culture that UCP likes to believe

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Alberta Election Manifestos 2023

Alberta goes to the polls next Monday, so it’s time for another edition of “check out those election promises”.  I’ll restrict my comments to the New Democratic Party (NDP) and the United Conservative Party (UCP) since those are the only parties likely to win seats or crack 3% of the vote (yes, yes, the Alberta Party – colour me unconvinced). You can see the New Democratic Party Platform here.  It’s not quite a platform in the traditional sense of having

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The Political Argument for Higher Education

Let me start with three comments/conversations I’ve seen and had in the past little while. Those are all interesting observations on their own but let’s think about the implications of the three comments together.  In other words, institutions have two choices.  First, they can wait for brief moments when the political system allows politicians to ignore the short-term interests of donors and hit them hard.  Or, second, they can exert themselves to try to make institutions like universities and colleges

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Higher Education in Ireland

Alex Usher (AU): Hi Everyone.  I’m Alex Usher and this is The World of Higher Education podcast. Today we are talking all things Irish higher education, and joining us as our expert guide to the terrain is Ellen Hazelkorn, principal at BH Associates, a Higher Education consultancy in Ireland, a Professor Emerita at the Technological University of Dublin and one of the sharpest all-around minds in European higher education. Ireland, like many small countries, has to punch way above its weight to get

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