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Category: Worldwide PSE

Chinese Higher Education in Four Graphs

Every once in awhile you have to just sit and marvel at what the Chinese government has managed to pull off in higher education.  Since the turn of the millennium, enrolments have increased five-fold.  That’s staggering enough, but check out figure 1 below. Figure 1: Change in Enrolment and Size of 18-21 Cohort, 2000-2017 (2000 = 100) That five-fold jump in enrolment?  It occurred at the same time as a 21% drop in the size of the 18-21 cohort (in

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June 8, 2018 No Comments

What’s Left of the Bologna Process

Last week, Ministers responsible for higher education from the 48 countries, constituting the members of the European Higher Education Area (EHEA), met in Paris for the regular triennial “Bologna Process Ministerial Conference”.  Which was odd, because the substantive bits of the Bologna Process have been over for about a decade now.  So, what were they talking about? Back in the day (20 years ago, to be exact), higher education across Europe was a hodge-podge of systems.  The French had initial

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May 30, 2018 1 Comment

Better Know a Higher Ed System: Japan (3)

Japan is one of the world’s most hierarchical societies.  You could have a pretty good argument about whether or not this is an artefact of the Tokugawa bakufu of the 17th century or if it goes back to the Kamakura regime of the 12th – 14th centuries, but either way, it’s been that way a long-time.  It’s in the language, the culture, the politics – pretty much everywhere.  And so, too, in the higher education system. This hierarchy manifests itself in a few ways,

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May 24, 2018 No Comments

Better Know a Higher Ed System: Japan (Part 2)

We all know that Japan is a technological leader, right? An “innovation nation”?  And we all know innovation comes from universities, right?  So Japanese universities must be kind of god-like in their innovation abilities, right?  Right? Well, no, not exactly.  Or not the way Canadian universities think about the term, anyway.  And understanding why this is the case is a helpful way to think about the poverty of Canada’s own innovation thinking. So, let’s start by looking at Gross Expenditures

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May 23, 2018 No Comments

Better Know a Higher Ed System: Japan (Part 1)

I haven’t done one of these in awhile and since I’m vacationing here, so it seems like it’s time. Japan is a fascinating country for any number of reasons, but one of them is that it has played technological catch-up with the west not once but twice, and in both cases very successfully.  As such, reflecting on the role universities have played sheds considerable light on what we think of as “universal truths” about the benefits of higher education. Until

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May 22, 2018 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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