Category: Worldwide PSE

The Learning Centred University with Steven Mintz

Hi everyone, Tiffany and Sam here — your World of Higher Education podcast producers. While Alex is away in Japan, we’re here to introduce this week’s episode. In this interview, Alex speaks with Steven Mintz, a renowned scholar and postdoctoral researcher, and author of the book, “The Learning-Centered University: Making College a More Developmental, Transformational, and Equitable Experience” In the following conversation, Mintz discusses what makes a learning-centered university, the benefits of active learning over traditional lectures, and the practical

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The Fifteen, March 21, 2025

Welcome back for another edition of The Fifteen. For the past two weeks, it seems like there have only been two stories in higher education: the Trump attacks on higher education and the QS world subject rankings. We cover the first, of course, but also stories of growing pains, corruption, ambition and blatant rent-seeking from places as far afield as Korea, Italy, Brazil, Vietnam and China. Enjoy. The Trump administration is, understandably, a magnet for media attention that can make

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From Soviet Influence to Market Economy: Mongolia’s Higher Education Journey

It’s been a while since we did an episode looking at the higher education system of a far-flung corner of the world. Recently I was perusing the pages of International Higher Education, a wonderful quarterly publication out of Boston College, and I saw a great little article about the challenges facing Mongolian higher education, and I knew this was something we had to cover on the podcast. Unless you spend a lot of time reading about the Chinggis Khan Empire,

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Is Japan Stirring?

I am in Tokyo this week and next (part vacation—the sumo was excellent, thanks for asking —and part study tour with the University Vice-President’s Network), so of course it’s time for another of my periodic attempts to sum up what’s going on in this always-fascinating country. Japan is—or at least was—known as a “hi-tech” society. But this, oddly enough, never meant that it was a “science” society. Japan for the most part did not get rich by developing its own

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

Spotlight Wow. It’s already been a week since AI-CADEMY, and I’m still hung up on all the vibrant discussions that happened in Calgary, the insights shared by all, and the palpable eagerness to learn and collaborate. If you haven’t already, make sure to read Alex’s Wednesday blog for a quick summary (and if you attended, there are more post-event follow-ups coming your way soon) – but on a more personal note, I want to express how much of a privilege

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