The World of Higher Education Podcast Listen now →

The World of Higher Education Podcast Listen now →

Category: Worldwide PSE

Strategy Horizons at the Top

I’ve been working on a project recently, looking at current university strategic plans around the world, and particularly those of leading “world-class” universities. One of the key things I am looking at is what you might call “strategic horizons”— how long do institutions see or plan ahead? My sample for this is the Top 100 universities from the Academic Ranking of World Universities (ARWU), done by the Shanghai Rankings organization (minus the MD Anderson Cancer Centre in Houston, which is

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May 26, 2025 1 Comment

The Fifteen: May 23, 2025

Welcome to the seventeenth edition of The Fifteen. This week, we chart the shifting currents in global higher education—from mass firings in Afghanistan to a national support staff strike in Ghana to some odd collateral damage from recent Indo-Pakistani tensions. Lots of disappointing news about funding cuts, stories of governments trying to deal with issues of security, program length and the regulation of private sector universities, and the arrival of a truly eye-rolling set of rankings. Enjoy! That’s our bi-weekly

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May 23, 2025 No Comments

Incremental Change or System Overhaul? An Update on Higher Ed Reform in NZ with Roger Smyth

In some countries, higher education policy just seems to sit still for decades. In others, hyperactivity is a more normal state. Today we’re looking at the 2020s poster child for higher education hyperactivity. It’s not the usual suspects, the UK or Australia, it’s little New Zealand where we’re making our fourth stop on this podcast in just over two and a half years. When last we were in Wellington, we talked to Chris Whelan from Universities New Zealand about university

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May 22, 2025 No Comments

HESA’s AI Observatory: What’s new in higher education (May 16, 2025)

Spotlight Happy Friday to all readers,  This AI blog will be the last of the current academic semester, before we take a bit of a break until the next academic year. It will also be a bit of a longer one, to properly wrap the year… So sit comfortably and enjoy the ride! Last month, we hosted a virtual AI Roundtable to reflect on learnings from AI-CADEMY, discuss remaining challenges, and try to identify concrete steps for institutions to consider

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May 16, 2025 No Comments

Between Excellence and Relevance: The Regional University Dilemma

Hi everyone.  I’m Alex Usher and this is The World of Higher Education podcast. Over the past few decades, Higher Education had taken on a number of new roles.  As we discussed with Ethan Schrum on this podcast over two years, in the years after World War II, universities became obsessed with showing how essential they were with solving society’s problems.  One of these problems – particularly as universities proliferated and started showing up in more and more distant locales – was regional

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May 15, 2025 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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