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Category: Students

Who Wants MOOCs?

Over the past few months, a lot of ink has been spilled, and pixels displayed, on the subject of Massive, Open, Online Courses (MOOCs).  For me, three particular types of stories have stood out: two by their presence, and one by its absence. The first kind are those breathless, OTT pieces about how MOOCs are either “changing universities for good” (Don Tapscott), or “definitely a disruptive industry” (Clayton Christensen).  It’s never entirely clear what the factual basis for these claims

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February 27, 2013 1 Comment

Is This the Worst Student Movement Ever?

I’m trying to imagine a worse excuse for a student movement than the one Quebec has at the moment; and I have to say that I’m not sure I can. I mean, sure, the Canadian Federation of Students has talked some awful crap about how reducing net tuition for poor students is unacceptable, unless richer kids get a break too – really ludicrous stuff, which objectively favours richer students over poorer ones.  But so far as I know, they’ve never

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February 25, 2013 1 Comment

Rough Times at ST. FX

I’ve been saying for awhile now that falling government revenue and rising faculty salary expectations have made a really knock-down drag-em-out faculty strike somewhere in Canada – the kind that knocks out an entire semester – almost inevitable.  The one that started Monday at Nova Scotia’s St. Francis Xavier University may not last that long, but boy does it look ugly. Basically, the dispute appears to be as follows: Management is offering somewhere between a 6 and 7% salary increase

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January 30, 2013 No Comments

What Goes Up May Come Down

About six years ago now, when policymakers in Canada started to get excited about international education, many hoped that foreigners might be able to subsidize our expensive system of higher education.  I don’t mean to put too fine a point on it, but the thinking was: if the Australians could manage it, presumably so could we. To date, our results have been pretty good.  International enrolments keep rising. The money keeps on flowing, offsetting the weakness in government funding.  What

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January 18, 2013 No Comments

Islamic Student Loans

READER’S NOTE: HESA does not have connections to any organizations that offer interest-free loans.    As-salaam Alaikum. Every once in awhile, someone in the student movement hears tell of interest in Islam being prohibited, thinks about student loans for a microsecond, and then comes up with the idea that student loans are “unislamic” and, hence, culturally inappropriate.  This, in the past, has led some in Canada to claim that the whole student aid system needs to be revised and made more

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December 12, 2012 14 Comments
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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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