I often wish there were more academics looking at higher education rather than just practising it, and it is rare indeed to come across a useful cross-country comparison like this one. The book’s categorisation of students into five different groups depending on their outlook and financial position is particularly thought-provoking, and I am struck by the similarities as well as the differences across the three areas being studied, England, Italy and Sweden. More...
HEPI has published a new policy paper, Protecting the public interest in higher education, by Bill Rammell, Vice Chancellor of the University of Bedfordshire and the Minister for Further and Higher Education (2005-08) in the last Labour Government. More...
If you are lucky, there may be a few times in your career when you are given the opportunity to really make an impact. For those of us working in widening participation outreach, that time is now. More...
By Alex Usher. Next week, everyone’s favourite Federation of Students is going to have a “Day of Action” to demand “Free Education for All”. A few months ago I explained why some student groups think it’s a good idea to be protesting right now even while governments are quite sympathetic to them. More...
By Alex Usher. Is there any part of the university that has been more transformed over the past decade than libraries? One of the fascinating things about looking through old Canadian Association of Research Libraries (CARL) statistical reports is how many things weren’t counted, say ten years ago. Expenditures on databases? Not counted. Logins to databases? Searches or article requests? Nope, nope. More...
By Alex Usher. The Canadian Association of Research Libraries (CARL) recently issued its annual statistical report. I thought I’d take the opportunity over the next couple of days to take a look at a few interesting patterns in library practices and expenditures. They shed some interesting light on the pressures Canadian academic libraries face right now. More...
By Alex Usher. Yesterday I outlined why a major private university has never emerged in Canada. But I also suggested that it wasn’t impossible one might pop up in the future if it were backed by someone with sufficiently deep pockets and an eye for strategy. More...
By Alex Usher. If you’re a long-time reader of this blog, you’ll know that every spring I put together a little summary of provincial budgets and what they mean for higher education. A few days ago I decided to put together a slide comparing the cumulative changes in provincial funding since 2011. Here’s what it looks like, in inflation-adjusted dollars. More...
By Alex Usher. Back in the 1850s, the University of Sydney (which was formed at more or less the same time as our own University of Toronto, and on a very similar model) was trying to figure out how to attract quality academic staff from the mother country. More...
By Alex Usher. If you pay attention to student assistance, you know about income-contingent loans. And if you’ve heard about income-contingent loans, you probably know that the first national scheme debuted in Australia back in the late 1980s. You might even know that the first theoretical exploration of income-contingent loans was made by Milton Friedman back in the 1950s (actually, he was talking more about human-capital contracts, but close enough. More...
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