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Category: Worldwide PSE

The Listening Tour

There’s a little management technique gaining some traction called the “Listening Tour”.  In the US, over the past eighteen months, new Presidents at Carnegie Mellon and James Madison have used this to inaugurate their terms.  At Princeton, new President (and erstwhile Provost) Chris Eisgruber decided to embark on an entire “Year of Listening”, though why he needs a whole year when he’s been provost for the past nine is unclear.  Here at home, the pioneer of this is new Dalhousie

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January 15, 2014 8 Comments

Better Know a Higher Ed System: Chile

Chile has a very diverse higher education sector, and has been subject to a lot of policy experimentation in recent years.  That makes it a case to watch, both regionally and globally. Prior to the 1973 coup, Universidad de Chile was the country’s pre-eminent school, with campuses across the country.  But academia didn’t fare so well under Pinochet, as there were waves of arrests, exiles, and, in some cases, executions.  All of this meant that, on occasion, whole departments suddenly

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January 10, 2014 2 Comments

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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December 16, 2013 1 Comment

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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December 5, 2013 No Comments

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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November 21, 2013 1 Comment

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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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