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Category: Politics

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

There Is Such A Thing As A Dumb Question

You may have seen a story last week from CBC about the New Brunswick provincial government wanting to slash $35-50M from post-secondary funding this year. The story was actually about four days old when the CBC ran it – l’Acadie Nouvelle had all the goods the previous Friday based on one quite astonishing piece of paper that the Minister of Post-Secondary Education, Training and Labour circulated to university Presidents at a meeting two weeks ago. Here’s the picture L’Acadie Nouvelle

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March 2, 2026 2 Comments

Generation Z and the New Politics of Protest

Historically, students have played an outsized role in politics. They were key to overthrowing regimes in places like South Korea in the 1960s, Ghana in the 1970s, and Serbia in 2000. And even in the recent past, we’ve seen students oust a regime in Bangladesh. But things seem to be changing. Since the overthrow of Sheikh Hasina’s government in Bangladesh a year and a half ago, we’ve seen strongly youth infused protest movements, which have overthrown governments in Nepal, Madagascar,

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February 19, 2026 No Comments

Higher Education After Its Peak

Ever since World War II, higher education has been a growth industry. Maybe student numbers haven’t risen every year, or funding hasn’t always gone up, but the general trend has been positive. But right across the world, that upward trend has come under threat over the last decade or so. In Korea or Taiwan, for instance, youth numbers have collapsed, and with them enrolments have fallen and universities have closed. In the rest of the OECD, public funding for higher

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February 5, 2026 1 Comment

Farewell Cakeism, Welcome Trade-offs, Effectiveness and Efficiencies

Arguably the worst thing that has happened to western society over the past few decades has been the rise of cakeism. Though he hardly invented the idea, the doctrine is linked to former UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson, through his repeated use of the phrase “my policy on cake is pro-having it and pro-eating it”. Basically, it’s the ideology of pretending trade-offs never need to be made.   I’ve recently mentioned one example of cakeism in action, namely the proposal published

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January 20, 2026 No 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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