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Category: Worldwide PSE

A Thought for Gabriel Betancourt

In early 1918, a fellow by the name of Gabriel Betancourt was born in Medellin, Colombia.  If the name sounds faintly familiar, it’s probably because of his daughter, Ingrid, the Colombia politician who was famously held captive by FARC guerrillas for six years.  But in education, Gabriel is the one that matters.  He’s the one who invented the idea of student loans. To be fair, student loans weren’t entirely unheard of prior to WWII, but they were rare, and were offered by

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April 26, 2013 No Comments

Canadian Innovation, Seen from Abroad

So, I came across this quite remarkable little document yesterday – it’s a report prepared by MIT-Skoltech on the universities around the world who contribute the most to their local innovation systems. (What is Skoltech, you ask?  Well, it’s a university located in a nascent science and tech hub, just outside Moscow, in a place called Skolkovo, and is the pet project of the Medvedev wing of the Kremlin.  Anchoring this tech hub is the new Skolkovo University of Science

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April 24, 2013 1 Comment

The US Debt Freak-Out

If you read the US papers at all, you’ll have noticed a recent ratcheting-up of panic about student debt.  Take Charles Blow’s recent New York Times column, which describes US debt levels  as “staggering”, and having “long-term implications for our society and our economy, as that debt begins to affect when and if young people start families or enter the housing market.” Some facts are in order. It is certainly true that, in the United States, it’s possible to accumulate some

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March 15, 2013 No Comments

Stuff Happens: Rise of the Latinos

When you think about recent developments in American higher education, the negatives tend to predominate.  Cutbacks in state funding, soaring tuition fees, ballooning debt levels – it all leads you to believe that there’s been an enormous diminution of access.  But, very quietly, there’s been one incredibly good piece of news: a massive jump in Latino participation rates. For decades, now, one of the biggest challenges in American higher education has been low participation rates among Latino students.  Latinos are,

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February 21, 2013 No Comments

The Demand for PSE: Never as Simple as You Think

The New York Times website had a great little graphic the other day about youth unemployment rates in urban China.  It looked like this:  Unemployment in Urban China, 20-24 year-olds               For people who see higher education entirely in terms of “work outcomes”, this kind of chart is deeply perplexing.  If higher education doesn’t pay, why do Chinese students keep lining up for university? There are really two sets of answers. First, one shouldn’t

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February 11, 2013 2 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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