The World of Higher Education Podcast Listen now →

The World of Higher Education Podcast Listen now →

Category: Politics

October 20th

Policy-making in Ottawa is like a huge river, moving in a slow stately procession, and only occasionally providing excitement if you hit some rapids.  It’s not like Washington, which – for all its vaunted “gridlock” – is actually more like an ice jam: there is a lot of pressure in the system, and things can move pretty quickly if the jam breaks somewhere.  Partly it’s because of our Westminster system, and our tradition of party discipline: there are not many independent policy

Read More »
August 26, 2015 1 Comment

Welcome Back

Morning, all.  August 24th.  Back, as promised. School starts shortly.  The new crop of frosh were born in 1997, if you can believe that – to them, Princess Diana has never been alive, and Kyoto has always been a synonym for climate change politics (check out the Beloit Mindset List for more of these ).  Stormclouds line the economic horizon.  It’s going to be an interesting year. In the US, progress on any of the big issues in higher education

Read More »
August 24, 2015 No Comments

Truth and Reconciliation

Earlier this month, Justice Murray Sinclair released the final report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC).  There are some elements of it that make for interesting reading from a post-secondary perspective. (To international readers: for a period of roughly a century, the Government of Canada provided education to First Nations Students through a series of “residential schools”, which were mostly run by one of the main churches.  These places were horrific; over that century, or so, tens of thousands

Read More »
June 18, 2015 4 Comments

Will Things Change if Harper Goes?

There is a strain of thinking in higher education that goes something like this: “everything bad in higher education funding is the fault of neo-liberals [this being a general term of abuse rather than an actual ideological signifier].  Once neo-liberals are out of office, we can get back to the good old days, and not worry about austerity”. It seems to me that the evidence for this point-of-view is pretty thin.  Near as I can tell, neither of the main

Read More »
June 10, 2015 No Comments

Funding Formulas 201

The last time we  talked about funding formulas, we discussed the difference between determinative and allocative formulas.  When we talk about Ontario, which is currently undergoing a funding formula review, we’re definitely talking about the latter.  The formula isn’t going to drive total spending (this remains the legislature’s prerogative), what it is going to do is decide how the total amount will be split up. The question is: how best to do this? At this point, it’s worth going into

Read More »
June 2, 2015 2 Comments
Load More

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.

Subscribe

Search Posts

Search Publications

Social Media

Linkedin Youtube Spotify

Recent Posts

More thoughts on...