Category: Worldwide PSE

Letter from Japan

Morning all.  I’m in the midst of a couple of weeks in Japan (the sumo was fun, thanks, though the overall quality of the field is pretty weak since Hakuho retired and Terunofuji’s knees gave out) and though this trip has absolutely nothing to do with work, I have nevertheless had thoughts about the country and its higher education system. Here’s the thing about Japan: it used to be the future.  It’s not anymore.  Go back to the early 1990s

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Arab Higher Education

This week’s The World of Higher Education podcast features the work of Dr. Elizabeth Buckner from the Ontario Institute of Studies in Education at the University of Toronto.  Dr. Buckner is the author of Degrees of Dignity: Arab Higher Education in the Global Era, published by the U of T Press in 2022.  It’s an excellent book on a topic that doesn’t get a lot of space in English language presses so I was very happy to see this book appear and even happier

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Access Gaps in Low- and Middle-Income Countries

Morning all. Today is Thursday and hence podcast day. Today’s guest is my friend Jamil Salmi, former tertiary education co-ordinator with the World Bank, Global higher education consultant and all-around mensch. Back in the mid-to-late 2000s, Jamil was perhaps the world-expert on the phenomenon of World-Class universities and his recipe for creating them — money plus talent plus good governance, and let stir for a few decades — has certainly stood the test of time. But lately, Jamil’s work has taken a different

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American Higher Education in 2023

This week my guest on the podcast is Chris Marsicano, a professor of Educational Studies at Davidson College in North Carolina. We discuss what’s ahead for higher education in the United States in 2023. It’s easy enough to shrug in despair at the United States and higher education these days.  The country barely got out of the Trump years with democracy intact, and since then higher education – which for decades mostly maintained strong bipartisan support – has become a

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The Jacinda Ardern Legacy

It’s Thursday, and that means it’s time for episode 2 of The World of Higher Education podcast.  Today my guest is Dave Guerin, Chief Executive and Editor-in-Chief of Tertiary Insight, a higher education news service based in Wellington.  Our subject: the higher education record of recently resigned New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern. Ardern came to power promising to eliminate tuition fees over the course of three terms in office, only to reverse course after one term, with the promise

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