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Category: Research

Notes on Research Policy, Here and Abroad

Hi all. I thought I would take some time to have a chat about how research policy is evolving in other countries, because I think there are some lessons we need to learn here in Canada. One piece of news that struck me this week came from Switzerland, where the federal government is slashing the budget of the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF) by 20%. If the Swiss, a technological powerhouse of a nation, with a broad left-right coalition in

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October 6, 2025 1 Comment

The Shrinking Research University Business Model

For most of the past 30 or so years, big Canadian universities have all been working off more or less the same business model: find areas where you can make big profits and use those profits to make yourself more research-intensive. That’s it. That’s the whole model. International students? Big profit centres. Professional programs? You better believe those are money-makers. Undergraduate studies – well, they might not make that much money in toto but holy moly first-year students are taken

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September 16, 2025 6 Comments

The State of Postsecondary Education in Canada, 2025

Hi all. Today, HESA is releasing the eighth edition of The State of Postsecondary Education in Canada, co-authored by myself and HESA’s Jiwoo Jeon and Janet Balfour. Many thanks to our partners – Pearson, Studiosity, Duolingo, Capio, Element451 and Riipen – for supporting this year’s edition. You probably don’t need to actually read this year’s edition to know that the state of postsecondary education in Canada is a bit perilous. And the reason for this, quite simply, is that public

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September 3, 2025 2 Comments

Five Rules for 2025-26

Morning all.  It’s been a busy summer at HESA Towers. We’ve been developing Boardwise, our new suite of governance products with our partners at Balsam Advisory, and exploring new ideas on data governance and analytics with our friends at Plaid Analytics. We’ve also been touring the country with the Royal Bank of Canada (RBC) Thought Leadership Office and the Business +  Higher Education Roundtable (BHER) to talk about higher education, economic growth and productivity. The “what we heard” document from

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September 2, 2025 2 Comments

That Was the Quarter That Was, Spring 2025

What’s been going on around the world since the end of March, you ask?  Well, unsurprisingly, the biggest stories have come from the United States.  There are in effect four fronts to the Trump administration’s attacks on the world of higher education.  First of all, the government’s new budget is going to reduce student eligibility for student loans and grants, meaning there will be less opportunity available to American students.  Second, the budget also proposes to radically slash the budgets of the

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June 10, 2025 1 Comment

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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