Morning everyone. Y’all know the drill: every December I come along and tell you what I’ve read in the world of higher education, let you know the stars and dogs, as well as give out a “book of the year prize”. Two reminders: first, that I did a summary of my (considerable) reading from the first half of the year back here, and not everything I read is something that came out this year, so “books of the year” aren’t
On this episode of One Podcast to Start Your Day, we’re hopping overseas to chat with our friends from Wonkhe for a year-in-review on higher education in the United Kingdom. David Kernohan (Acting Editor), Jim Dickinson (Associate Editor), and Sunday Blake (Associate Editor) join us to talk about some of the UK’s most pressing issues in higher education. The full podcast can be found with a full transcript here, along with the past episodes of OPTSYD. Thanks to our producers Tiffany MacLennan
Morning all. There are two recent books of note I want to highlight: Study Gods: How the New Chinese Elite Prepare for Global Competition by Yi-Lin Chiang, and Empire of Ideas: Creating the Modern University System from Germany to American to China by William C. Kirby. Study Gods is basically an ethnography of students at a couple of “top” high schools in the Beijing area. It follows a number of students – both successful and unsuccessful – from early in
To Australia, where big things may be afoot. One thing about Australian higher education politics is that they tend not to do small reforms, regardless of which party is in power. Where undergraduate fees are concerned, it looks like there might be another big shift, so let’s look at the current state of play. Here’s the first thing you need to understand about undergraduate fees in Australia: they don’t work like fees anywhere else in the sense they are not
One thing that’s been quite clear for awhile is that the Canadian community college sector has been seeing a decline in domestic enrolments for the better part of a decade. Peak domestic community college enrolment was in 2012-13: by 2020-21 numbers were already down by over 10% and my understanding from chatting with people across the country is that domestic numbers have continued to decline in the past two years, quite substantially in some cases. Obviously, many colleges have found
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.
