Tag: New Zealand

Global Higher Education’s Post-COVID Future (3) – New Pedagogies, New Credentials

On Monday, I described some of the big changes of the past 18 months; yesterday I discussed the first big future trend (“Funding Challenges Forever”), and today I want to talk about the second, which I call “New Pedagogies and New Credentials”. The experience of learning online during COVID has divided both learners and instructors.  A clear majority have a healthy dislike for it, and a few loath it.  But a significant minority enjoyed the experiment.  For students who never

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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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Student Loans and Income Tax Systems

Last week, I blogged about my disappointment with the Throne Speech.  However, I left out one really promising thing; namely, the idea that it would make possible free, automatic tax filing for simple returns to ensure citizens receive the benefits they need.  This is good, but in some ways insufficiently ambitions.  They should go further and fully modernize the system to make possible the collection of loans through the income tax system and thus make possible a more fully income-contingent loan

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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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Antipodean Student Organization Struggles

With the Ford government being the first to take aim at compulsory student unionism in Canada (he will not be the last; in Alberta, Jason Kenney’s UCP has a similar policy resolution on its books), it is worth taking a more detailed look at how the move to make fees optional has played out elsewhere.  Specifically, Down Under, where these policy ideas were first put into practice in the under the name “Voluntary Student Unionism” (VSU, in Australia) and “Voluntary

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