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Category: Worldwide PSE

US Debt Cancellation – What Just Happened?

So, the big news last week in world higher education was the Biden administration finally cancelling some student debt and – in theory, who knows? – resuming student loan repayments in December of this year (they were suspended in the Spring of 2020 in the chaos of early COVID.) Let’s break down Wednesday’s announcement. The government forgave the following debt: Up to $20,000 of Department of Education debt for borrowers who apply and meet the following three criteria: have outstanding

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August 30, 2022 No Comments

The Mid-2022 Reading Review

I know every single one of you blog readers brings higher ed literature to the beach, and so – since we are approaching the end of the blog season – it’s time for a reading round-up to help you fill out your summer reading list. I’ve been reading fewer institutional histories than usual.  There was The University of New Zealand by Hugh Parton, a history of higher education in New Zealand up to about 1960, when the country had four campuses but

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June 8, 2022 No Comments

America’s Student Debt Cancellation Morass

It has now been something on the order of 26 months since anyone in the United States has been required to make payments their student loans.  As in Canada, these payments were suspended at the outset of the pandemic.  But whereas in Canada repayments re-started after about six months (Oct 1, 2020), in the United States they have yet to do so.  Understanding why gets us all a little closer to understanding the disfunction that is the American Higher Education

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May 26, 2022 2 Comments

The Fracturing of Global Rankings

Interesting news out of China last week, as three major research universities – Lanzhou University, Renmin University and Nanjing University (the last of which is a genuine global player)  announced that they would stop participating in annual rankings conducted by overseas rankings agencies.  The purported reason?  Because, apparently, they wanted to focus more on delivering “education with Chinese characteristics,” echoing a recent call from Xi Jinping to universities to avoid “copy(ing) foreign standards and models when we build world-class universities

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May 19, 2022 No Comments

Pivot

One of the more interesting higher ed books I’ve read so far this year is Pivot by Mark Lombardi and Joanne Soliday.  It’s not a brand-new book – it came out a few months before COVID – but its tales of small institutions transforming themselves (usually) in the face of overwhelming enrolment and financial pressures are still very fresh and reading their stories is worth anyone’s time. The four institutions covered in this book are, with one exception, places few

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May 16, 2022 2 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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