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Category: Worldwide PSE

Coronavirus (15) – Comparative Financial Carnage

Canadian universities and colleges have yet to release any figures about expected losses from coronavirus, but in other countries, estimates are popping up.  So, how bad might it get? Let’s start with the assumption that institutions in jurisdictions where institutions are supported mainly or entirely by government funds are the ones that are going to suffer the least.  I have yet to hear of any government anywhere making cuts in public funding to higher education during the emergency (ok, Alberta,

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April 14, 2020 No Comments

From the Shelves of HESA Towers – The Cathedral of Learning

Some of the more interesting piece on our shelves are not actually books at all, but pamphlets, short guides, conference proceedings, and other paraphernalia.  One day, I will show y’all the programme from that 2006 conference on student aid sponsored by the Thai government, where we got to see the Thai civil servants in their quasi-military uniforms (this is a thing, believe it or not), and where the Deputy Minister of Finance mounted the stage beneath two crossed shooting jets

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April 9, 2020 No Comments

Problems in International Institutional Typology

As you all know, a reasonable chunk of my work involves making international comparisons.  This is far from simple in higher education because basic units of analysis differ enormously from one country to another.  Whether you are counting students (do doctoral students count, when in some countries they are classified as employees? How do you equivalize student numbers for part-time status, which exists only in some countries?), or staff (how do you equivalize by rank? Do teaching-only staff count? What

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March 26, 2020 1 Comment

Coronavirus (5) – Admissions

Today I want to talk a little bit about what’s going to happen to university admissions worldwide over the next couple of months, and why the chaos looks set to last well into the fall, even if everyone re-opens in the late summer.  I will group the “chaos causers” into three and talk about them in ascending order of chaos. The domestic undergraduate recruitment cycle ended early.  Domestic students often take the spring to figure out where they are going, and

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March 18, 2020 2 Comments

Coronavirus (2)

Things are happening so quickly that I am starting to think I need to temporarily turn this blog into a full-on everyday Coronavirus feed.  A lot has happened since Monday. Overseas: In Austria, the government has told all universities to halt lectures and move online as much as possible.  It is unclear from the stories I have read whether there this is an open-ended or time-limited decision.  Greece closed all of its universities on Tuesday for a period of two weeks. 

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March 12, 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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