Category: Worldwide PSE

Three to Watch

A few years ago, Jamil Salmi put together a neat little book called, The Challenge of Establishing World-Class Universities, in which he noted that there were basically three ways to make a world class university: you can upgrade existing institutions (what most governments do), you can merge them (the French approach), or you can build entirely new institutions from scratch. That last option sounds ludicrous to most people in western countries.  Who would bypass existing institutions which, over time, have have received

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Income-Contingent Loan Problems

Everyone who’s ever given thought to the matter thinks that income-contingent loans are superior to mortgage-style loans.  At any given level of debt, it’s always preferable for low-income borrowers in repayment to have the option to suspend payments, and make them up at a later time.  Pretty much all the objections to income-contingency – especially here in Canada – are about matters extraneous to the actual method of loan repayment (e.g. fees would rise, interest is too high, etc.). The

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The Canadian Style of University Management

I recently met someone who had just moved to Canada from the UK, to take up a decanal position here.  He mentioned that, since his move, the two things that had most shocked him were: 1) how little power he has in Canada, compared to the UK; and, 2) just how much bureaucracy there is here.  He relayed this to me by explaining the difference in hiring procedures between the two countries, which I reproduce below, in tabular form:  

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Ten Years of Global University Rankings

Last week, I had the honour of chairing a session at the Conference on World-Class Universities, in Shanghai.  Held on the 10th anniversary of the release of the first global rankings (both the Shanghai rankings and the Times Higher Ed Rankings – then run by QS – appeared for the first time in 2003).  And so it was a time for reflection: what have we learned over the past decade? The usual well-worn criticisms were aired: international rankings privilege, the measurable

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Canada’s Bologna Moment

If you can cast your mind back all of three weeks, before the Ford video(s) and Mike Duffy going kamikaze on the Prime Minister, there was some big news out of Ottawa about how a Canada-Europe Comprehensive Economic Trade Agreement (CETA) had finally been reached. The finer details of the deal are still unavailable, but one thing that has been promised all along is that this deal will permit the free movement of labour between Canada and Europe.  And that’s

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