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Category: Worldwide PSE

University Endowments in a Global Context

Every once in awhile, when politicians of a certain mindset get going on the subject of how much money is being wasted in higher education, they fall back on a line about “why can’t universities be more self-sufficient”, or better yet, “why can’t they just fundraise more, like American universities do”? Easier said than done. Here are the top ten Canadian universities, by endowment. Top ten Canadian Universities by Endowment (in C$ Billion) So you’ve got Toronto at about $2

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June 4, 2015 3 Comments

The Cost of Moving the Needle

One of the things about increasing post-secondary participation is that the cost of improving access increases all of the time – as you get closer to universality, the students you want to attract becoming increasingly marginal, academically, and require greater investments in order for them to succeed. A really good example of this comes from the City University of New York (CUNY), which recently completed an evaluation of its Accelerated Study in Associate Programs (ASAP), which is meant to encourage

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June 1, 2015 3 Comments

Better Know a Higher Ed System: Lusophone Africa

If you’re ever depressed about the state of academia where you live, spare a thought for academics in a set of countries that are collectively one of higher education’s biggest backwaters: the Lusophone African countries of Cape Verde, Guinea-Bissau, Sao Tome & Principe, Mozambique, and Angola. The legacy of Portuguese colonialism hangs heavy over these countries.  After the Belgians, the Portuguese were probably the colonial power least concerned about educating native populations. They were also entrenched for a longer period

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May 29, 2015 No Comments

The 2016 Presidential Race

I’ve been spending a bit of time in the United States the last couple of weeks (Indianapolis, Boston, Washington DC), and one of the things I’m noticing is the extent to which political discourse – which, ludicrously, already centers around the 2016 Presidential Race – is focussed on issues in higher education.  Specifically: issues of tuition and student debt. This is interesting for a couple of reasons.  First of all, it’s an enormous shift from about ten years ago, when

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May 28, 2015 No Comments

Free Tuition: A Rocky Rollout in Chile

So the big news last week in Santiago was the announcement of the start of the “free tuition” plan, which was part of President Michelle Bachelet’s election platform in 2013.  Only it’s not quite free tuition, and it’s still not clear how it will be paid for. I’ve written previously (back here) about the Bachelet promise, and the potential difficulties with implementing it in a country where most higher education is provided by private institutions, and forced nationalization is expressly prohibited in

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May 25, 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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