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Category: Politics

Should Auld Acquaintance Be Forgot

It’s the end of the year for us at HESA Towers today (at least as far as blogging goes).  I know in the Scottish tradition, you’re supposed to use the end of the year for memories, but I kind of prefer the Japanese tradition of Bonenkai, or “forget-the-year”: basically, wipe out as many brain cells with alcohol and start the new year fresh. So, with that in mind, let’s look forward to 2018.   What should we expect? Well, I think

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December 15, 2017 No Comments

Antipodean Tuition News

All the really interesting news about tuition these days is happening south of the equator–let’s catch up. Chile.  When last we checked in on things in Santiago, we noted how President Bachelet’s gratuidad program had kind of foundered on the rocks of reality.  Having brought in free fees for the students in the bottom six income deciles at a cost of 607 billion pesos (roughly $1.25B Canadian), it turned out that the additional cost to make education free for the top four deciles

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December 14, 2017 No Comments

Artificial Intelligence

I am getting pretty sick of AI hype.  It’s not that I think AI is without value or a mirage or anything, but I think people are getting weirdly reluctant to challenge even the most obviously nonsensical claims about the industry.  But, since apparently others don’t seem to want to play skeptic on this, I guess I’m “it”.  So here goes: My critique of current AI-mania is basically three-fold. The Term Artificial Intelligence is Being Stretched Beyond Meaningful Use This

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December 12, 2017 3 Comments

A Canny Government Relations Strategy

[the_ad id=”11720″] Though it didn’t get a whole lot of ink/pixels, the Council of Ontario Universities launched a new lobbying campaign last week.  It’s called Partnering for a Better Future for Ontario and its focal point is a document of the same name – you can read the short version of the report here (yes, I know, only in academia could the short version of a lobbying report be 44 pages long).  In fact, it’s accompanied by a wide variety of supporting documents which

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December 7, 2017 No Comments

What a National Housing Strategy Tells Us About Higher Education

The big news in Canada last week was the unveiling by the governing Liberals of a “National Housing Strategy”.  Housing is a good policy file to watch for higher education policy types, because housing and higher education share a lot of qualities. This might not seem like an obvious policy analogy, but hear me out.  Shelter, like higher education, is often viewed as a “right”, but it’s one where the base assumption is (in North America, anyway) is that it

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November 29, 2017 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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