The World of Higher Education Podcast Listen now →

The World of Higher Education Podcast Listen now →

Category: Worldwide PSE

Performance-Based Funding (Part 2)

So, as we noted yesterday, there are two schools of thought in the US about performance-based funding (where, it should be noted, about 30 states have some kind of PBF criteria built into their overall funding system, or are planning to do so).  Basically, one side says they work, and the other says they don’t. Let’s start with the “don’t” camp, led by Nicholas Hillman and David Tandberg, whose key paper can be found here.  To determine whether PBFs affect

Read More »
February 18, 2015 1 Comment

Universities and Economic Growth

If you read the OECD/World Bank playbook on higher education, it’s all very simple.  If you raise investments into higher education and research, growth will follow. At the big-picture national level, this is probably true.  But it’s maddeningly inspecific.  What is the actual mechanism by which higher spending on a set of institutions translates into growth?  Is it the number of trained graduates produced?  Is it the quality or type of education they receive?  Does concentrating research in certain areas

Read More »
January 29, 2015 4 Comments

Another Australian De-regulation Update

So the last time we tuned into antics in Canberra, the government was trying to pass a fairly ambitious piece of legislation that would completely de-regulate tuition fees while (more or less) maintaining the HECS system, which means post-graduate contributions are always tied to income, and thus do not become too onerous.  The government was also going to cut institutional grants by about 20%, but keep the “demand-driven” system in which government dollars follow students no matter how many students attend.

Read More »
January 28, 2015 No Comments

King Abdullah bin Abdulaziz al-Saud

King Abdullah bin Abdulaziz al-Saud, King of Saudi Arabia for the past ten years (after effectively being regent for the ten years before that, due to his brother King Fahd’s incapacitation from stroke), died last week.  There can have been very few individuals who have had a greater effect on their country’s system of higher education. Perhaps his best-known initiative was the creation of his eponymous institution, the King Abdullah University of Science and Technology. Opened in 2009 near Jeddah,

Read More »
January 26, 2015 1 Comment

Some Interesting New Models of Student Representation

Historically, the development of student movements has been heavily linked with nationalism, anti-colonialism, modernity, and the development of the welfare state (i.e. they were pro all four of those).  However, as higher education has become massified around the world, students have by and large become less concerned with larger social issues, and more concerned with narrower, student-based concerns.  That hasn’t always led to a loss of radicalism (viz. the carré rouge), but it’s broadly true that over time student leadership

Read More »
January 16, 2015 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.

Subscribe

Search Posts

Search Publications

Social Media

Linkedin Youtube Spotify

Recent Posts

More thoughts on...