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Category: Worldwide PSE

Transnational Strategy Now

The world of transnational education – that is, the provision of education in one country by universities based abroad – is getting very interesting these days. In particular, branch campuses have returned to the centre of the industry’s activities in a way they have not been for well over a decade. Canada’s post-secondary system – which has always been a laggard in this area – risks getting left even further behind, unless institutions up their game substantially in the next

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January 28, 2026 No Comments

Authentic Universities: Choosing What Not to Be

University missions are tricky things to enunciate. From the point of view of many faculty, people who have reached their position by dint of their excellence in a specific field, tend not to view their employer’s main mission as one of providing a platform for their discipline. Understandably, this is not how local publics view things – they tend to look for something more externally-focused. Yet when institutions try to enunciate something beyond disciplines, for many it tends to feel odd or inauthentic.

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January 22, 2026 No Comments

The Fifteen: January 16, 2026

Hi all. It’s been over a month since the last Fifteen and you might think that the world of higher education would slow down over the holidays, but you’d be wrong. Buckle up, this is a big one. 1. Back in December the government in Bulgaria was forced to resign due to anti-corruption protests that were mainly led by students (although increasingly student protest is being called “Gen Z protests”, which is interesting and I would love to understand why). Iran is also currently undergoing a spasm of

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January 16, 2026 No Comments

Royal Roads University: A Canadian University Without Tenure or Senate

One way in which Canada is a big outlier in global higher education is the lack of standardization of university forms. Most countries have national or sub-national framework legislation that apply to all institutions’ operation and governance. Not Canada. Our provinces tend to prefer creating new bespoke legislation for every new institution that comes along. On the one hand, this leads to a pretty chaotic system. On the other: well, some time you get some pretty interesting experiments. One of the most interesting examples of

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January 15, 2026 2 Comments

What Is UNESCO’s Role in Global Higher Education Today

In the wake of World War II, the nations of the world thought seriously about the relationship between education and peace. One of the outcomes of that thinking was the creation of the United Nations’ Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organizations – UNESCO, for short – whose founding charter states: “since wars begin in the minds of men, it is in the minds of men that the defences of peace must be constructed”. And, since higher education was part of that mandate, that arguably

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January 8, 2026 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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