Category: Politics

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

Read More »

PEI Election Manifesto Review

Today is election day in Prince Edward Island, and so that also makes it HESA Towers Manifesto Review Day.  Buckle up!  One of the things that makes PEI adorable is how tiny all its politics are.  Like, in other provinces, manifestoes might make a general nod towards K-12 capital spending, but on the Island, parties will make specific promises about renovations to specific junior high schools.   But then again, perhaps not surprising when the province is only barely larger than the combined staff/student population of the University

Read More »

Budget Commentary 2023

Hello all. As usual, HESA Towers has been hard at work to bring you our budget commentary, which is available here. While there is the odd good news story in here – like more money for applied research in colleges – in the main, this is probably the worst budget for the higher education sector in years.  An $800 million year-on-year reduction in money for student grants – long foreshadowed, not by any means a breach of promise (the injection

Read More »

Corruption in South African Higher Education

This week’s World of Higher Education podcast episode takes us to South Africa.  My guest today is Dr. Jonathan Jansen, a distinguished professor of education at Stellenbosch University, just outside Cape Town, and president of the Academy of Science in South Africa.  And we’re talking about his absolutely harrowing new book, Corrupted: A Study of Chronic Dysfunction in South African Universities. You may have heard tales over the past decade or so about various state agencies in South Africa having

Read More »

American Higher Education in 2023

This week my guest on the podcast is Chris Marsicano, a professor of Educational Studies at Davidson College in North Carolina. We discuss what’s ahead for higher education in the United States in 2023. It’s easy enough to shrug in despair at the United States and higher education these days.  The country barely got out of the Trump years with democracy intact, and since then higher education – which for decades mostly maintained strong bipartisan support – has become a

Read More »