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Tag: United States

Servant Universities

A couple of days ago I discussed the choice Canadian institutions had between pursuing an international student market and serving local communities.  I am sure this remark will have been denounced as a false choice by many – and to be fair, it isn’t a perfect binary – so I thought I would expand on that thought. The notion of institutions “serving” their communities is, in some ways, a comparatively recent one.  The medieval universities “served” their communities by attracting students and

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August 29, 2019 No Comments

Danger Ahead

Canadian universities and colleges like to congratulate themselves for their enormous success in increasing international student enrolments over the past few years.  And why not?  That success has brought Canadian institutions billions of dollars and allowed them to make up for roughly a decade of domestic tuition fee controls and stagnant core provincial funding. We have told ourselves a lot of stories over the last few years about why we have been so successful.  Many of them have to do

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June 10, 2019 1 Comment

Closing Programs

You may, over the past year, followed the story of Stevens Point, a mid-sized (8000 student) regional campus in the University of Wisconsin system.  I want to look at this story today, because I think it contains some important lessons about how universities actually make and spend their money. Back in March 2018 the college, facing falling enrolment, announced it was going to kill thirteen humanities and social sciences programs – American studies, art (excluding graphic design), English (excluding English

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May 29, 2019 1 Comment

Breadth of Quality vs. Concentrations of Excellence

There was a time, perhaps twenty years ago, when the whole world wanted the American system of higher education.  The United States had the world’s most buoyant economy and a booming tech market, all apparently underpinned by a great, meritocratic system of universities.  Imitating it was the central if not fully-stated goal of China’s 985 program, Japan’s “Big Bang”, Germany’s Excellence Initiative and half a dozen other major national higher education systems. At the heart of most of these plans

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May 2, 2019 No Comments

From the Shelves of HESA Towers (II)

To continue with the occasional post on random books on the shelves at HESA Towers, today I want to talk about this book pictured below.  It doesn’t look like much, but it’s one of the most intriguing things kicking around the office.  It dates from the summer of 1967 and is called “The Gourman Report” Most histories of university rankings will tell you that the first commercial ranking of undergraduate institutions was in a 1983 edition of US News &

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May 1, 2019 2 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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