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Category: Worldwide PSE

How Equitable Can We Get?

Last month, the Higher Education Quality Council of Ontario (HEQCO) published a paper entitled “Redefining Access to Postsecondary Education”.  It raises a number of interesting questions about access in Ontario (which apply to Canada generally), so it’s worth examination. Stripped to the basics, the document lays out the following point (quoted from the Executive summary) that Ontario funding and student aid policies “have resulted in a dramatic increase in overall enrolment at Ontario’s colleges and universities over the last two

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March 7, 2019 No Comments

The “Marketization” Critique

If you pay attention to the train wreck that is higher education policy in the UK, you will no doubt quickly come across claims that “marketization” is to blame.  Skyrocketing vice-chancellor’s (i.e. President’s) salaries?  Marketization at work.  Student Mental Health pressure?  Also marketization.  Universities doing dodgy property deals?  You bet that’s marketization. When one phenomenon gets blamed for literally everything that goes wrong, my spidey senses start tingling.  What is this “marketization” exactly?  How do we know it is to blame for everything? 

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February 27, 2019 1 Comment

What is Stefan Collini For?

If you follow UK higher education at all you’ve almost certainly come across the writing of Stefan Collini, most likely in the Guardian or the London Review of Books.  He’s not a higher education specialist (as he frequently disclaims in his work); rather, he is a professor of English Literature and Intellectual History at Cambridge who happens to have developed a rather impressive sideline in writing wry, droll, heartfelt critiques of UK higher education policy. I find him as annoying as all hell.  My

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February 15, 2019 2 Comments

The Four Logics of International Student Mobility

One of the significant challenges in analyzing policies around international student mobility is that there are multiple competing logics at work within the field.  However, the tensions between these competing logics are often not acknowledged, which makes it difficult to understand how to make choices between them. Today, we will look at four logics concerning in-bound student mobility, in order to disentangle them and promote sensible policy analysis. The first logic of internationalization is what I call the pilgrimage logic:

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February 11, 2019 1 Comment

Rationing Loans

While student loans are cheaper (and hence more commonly used) than grants, they still cost money, both in terms of interest subsidies and in terms of loan losses through loan defaults.  As a result, nowhere are they unlimited in scope.  Every government finds ways to ration loans.  Today, I thought I’d go through some of the ways governments do that and – in passing – help everyone understand in what ways North American loan systems are generous in comparison with

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February 8, 2019 1 Comment

One Thought to Start Your Day

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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