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Category: Worldwide PSE

The US Student Debt Cancellation Debate

If you follow US policy debates at all, you will probably over the last couple of years have noticed that the idea of student debt cancellation has become a totem of the progressive left.  With the election of Joe Biden two weeks ago (and again this week, after several recounts) this issue is coming centre-stage, with some kind of executive order on the matter being seen potentially as an “early win” for the new administration.  Below, I answer some of

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November 19, 2020 No Comments

The Damage Done (So Far)

It’s now midnight eastern time and it’s looking more and more like we are not going to know who won the U.S. election until later today or perhaps even late this week (Pennsylvania probably will not report fully until Friday).   But it’s not too late to take a few moments to take a good look at the damage done to American higher education over the past four years, and where the system might be headed next. In some ways the

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November 4, 2020 1 Comment

So How are Enrolments Looking, Anyway?

Back in the spring, there was widespread panic that postsecondary enrolments – particularly international enrolments – would crumble if students had to spend a whole term online.  What do we know about how this has turned out this fall? Well, in other countries, this is a relatively straightforward question to answer.  In the UK, national data on new university acceptances are published right around the time students go back to school.  This probably overstates enrolments (not everyone who is accepted

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November 2, 2020 1 Comment

Measuring Internationalization

One maddening thing about universities is that so much of what they claim to value is so badly measured.  Take internationalization.  Usually, this gets measured by the number or proportion of international students, which is ludicrously reductive given the extent to which in many countries international students are primarily income sources; occasionally, you might get some information about the number of foreign faculty.  Maybe.  But that’s it.  Anything deeper on internationalization is usually judged to be unmeasurable, so there is no way

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October 19, 2020 2 Comments

Two Quick International Student Aid Updates

From Denmark and New Zealand, we have some very interesting policy developments to review. Let’s start down south, where Jacinda Ardern’s Labour Party seems to be cruising to a massive electoral victory in next week’s election.  Labour, which came second in 2017 but grabbed the brass ring via a coalition agreement with the nationalist/populist New Zealand First party, seems to be within touching distance of a standalone majority, which is almost impossible in a proportional representation system.  I guess that’s

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October 15, 2020 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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