I had planned to continue on today with my series about operating budgets by taking a look at some scenarios for Central Canada, but I’ve been on the east coast for work the past couple days, and so that post will have to wait. We’ll get back to it shortly, I promise. But for now, let me turn to something I’ve been thinking about lately. One of the maddening things about many discussions that concern higher education and business is
Short and sweet today, folks, as I know you’re all busy. We’ve done a lot of research over the years at HESA Towers. We read up on what employers want – and we also do studies that look at how recent graduates fare in the labour market, and what they wish they’d had more of while in university. And pretty much, without exception, regardless of field of study, those two sources agree on what students need to be better-prepared for
Over the last few years, what with the recession and all, there has been increased pressure on post-secondary institutions to ensure that their graduates get jobs. Though that’s substantially the result of things like curriculum and one’s own personal characteristics, landing a job also depends on being able to get interviews and to do well in them. That’s where Career Services Offices (CSOs) come in. Today, HESA released a paper that looks at CSOs and their activities. The study explores
About four months ago, UBC President Stephen Toope wrote a widely-praised piece called “Universities in an Era of Non-Lieux“. Basically, the piece laments the growing trend toward the deracinated homogenization of universities around the globe. He names global rankings and government micro-management of research and enrolment strategies – usually of a fairly faddish variety, as evidenced by the recent MOOC-mania – as the main culprits. I’m not going to take issue with Toope’s central thesis: I agree with him 100% that
In business, companies strive to increase market share; in higher education, institutions compete for prestige. This is why, despite whatever your told by people in universities, rankings are catnip to university administrations: by codifying prestige, they give institutions actual benchmarks against which they can measure themselves. But prestige is actually much harder to amass than market share. Markets can increase in size; prestige is a zero-sum affair (my prestige is related directly to your lack thereof). And universities have fewer
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.
