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Category: Worldwide PSE

Higher Education in Developing Countries is Getting Harder

Here’s the thing about universities in developing countries: they were designed for a past age.  In Latin America, the dominant model was that of Napoleon’s Universite de France – a single university for an entire country, which was all the rage among progressives for the first half of the nineteenth century.  In Africa (and parts of Asia), it was a colonial model – whatever the University of London was doing in the late 1950s, that’s basically what universities (the bigger ones, anyway)

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January 22, 2016 No Comments

Political/Economic Risk and International Student Recruitment

A couple of big events occurred internationally over the last few weeks, which will matter to folks in the international recruitment field.  Briefly, they are: 1) The Saudis are pulling back.  Things are moderately bad in the kingdom right now.  Their gambit of driving down the price of oil in order to run the American fracking industry out of business is not working as quickly as they hoped, and may have re-established an era of cheap, $50 (or sub-$50) oil for the foreseeable future. (And

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January 15, 2016 No Comments

The Nature of Universities: Multicultural Edition

I find myself increasingly annoyed with particular a line of rhetoric that academics sometimes use when they want to make a point.  “The university is not a corporation”, they say, “it is a community of scholars dedicated to the truth – if it is not that it is nothing.” You know, the Steffan Collini-types. Two things here.  First, a modern university actually is demonstrably a corporation, which is indeed a very good thing for everyone who likes to get a

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November 23, 2015 1 Comment

Quick Takes on Student Aid Around the World

Three quick hits: Islamic Student Loans in the UK.  Loans and Muslim students are always a hot topic.  That’s partly because there are a number of Muslim students who don’t like the idea of loans with interest (not very many, but enough to be noticeable), and partly because certain soi-disant “progressive” white kids like to use Muslims’ reticence about interest as an excuse to argue that loans are effectively racist, and therefore should all be replaced by grants (yes, really). 

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November 20, 2015 No Comments

Explaining the #FeesMustFall Movement

One of the more interesting policy debacles in higher education this year has been the fracas over tuition fees in South Africa, which has led to what some are calling the biggest set of anti-government protests since the end of apartheid.  Here’s what you need to know: The protests began when universities announced fee hikes for the coming year.  On average, the fee hikes were in the 6% range, which was relatively modest given a persistent inflation rate of just

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November 12, 2015 No 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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