By Alex Usher. The last couple of weeks have seen the unveiling of two massive but interesting strategic gambles taken by a couple of US public universities.  The kind of strategy moves that universities in other countries can only dream about.  I am speaking, of course, about the Purdue’s buy-out of Kaplan University and the University of Arizona’s attempt to create a global set of “microcampuses”. More...

By Alex Usher. MUN is in a position somewhat like the one the University of Alberta faced a couple of years ago, only worse.  Up to about 2012, a decade of hydrocarbon-fueled provincial budgets made MUN a pretty fun place.  The provincial government drenched the institution in money, which allowed it not only to keep tuition low (this year, $2,759 vs. Canadian average of $6,373), but also allow MUN to receive over $40,000 per FTE student, higher than the average in any other province. More...

By Alex Usher. I’ve been working a lot lately on two big projects that touch on the issue of secondary school guidance.  The first is a large project for the European Commission on admission systems across Europe and the second is one of HESA’s own projects looking at how students in their junior year of high school process information about post-secondary education (the latter is a product for sale – drop us a line at info@higheredstrategy.com if you’re an institution interested in insights in how to get on students’ radar before they hit grade 12). More...

By Alex Usher. To Tokyo, where the ruling Liberal Democrats are considering adopting a proposal from a small right-wing party (Nippon Ishin no Kai – roughly, Japan Restoration Party) to enshrine a constitutional right to free tuition.  This is not, it is safe to say, because of any principled attachment to accessible education – the party opposed free secondary education (which the Democratic Party implemented during its brief, mostly hapless, stint in government which ended five years ago) as recently as a couple of years ago, calling it “an unprincipled policy to buy votes”. More...

By Alex Usher. In developed Anglophone countries, we basically take it for granted that Universities are run by Presidents (or occasionally Principals) who are not only responsible to a Board of Governors, but are also selected by them.  But this is not the only way to select institutional heads.  They can be selected directly by the Ministry of Education (which still happens in many places, including China). More...

By Alex Usher. There’s no doubt about the nature of the problem.  As in other countries, women and minorities have trouble making it up the career ladder in academia at the same rate as white males.  The reasons for this are well-enough known that I probably needn’t recount them here (though if you really want a good summary try here and here). More...

By Alex Usher. Remember when everyone was freaking out because there were too many sociology graduates and not enough welders?  When otherwise serious people like Ken Coates complained about the labour market being distorted by the uninformed choices of 17-19 year-olds?  2015 seems like a long time ago. More...

By Alex Usher. Springtime brings with it two certainties: 1) massive, irritating weekend traffic jams in Toronto as the city grants permits to close down Yonge street for a parade to virtually any group of yahoos, thus making it impossible to go from the cities east to west ends and 2) provincial budgets.  And with that, it’s time for my annual roundup of provincial budgets (click on the year for previous analyses – 2016 2015 2014 2013).  It’s not as bad as last year but it’s still kind of depressing. More...

By Alex Usher. Every couple of years, the Canadian Federation of Students (CFS) produces a “research paper” to provide a new “evidence-based” spin to back up its eternal demand for free tuition. Last month, they put out a new version, this one entitled The Political Economy of Student Debt in Canada. The theme this time is lightly-recycled Piketty: Canada’s main problems are inequality and rising indebtedness; if we eliminate tuition, that’ll strike a blow against both so wa-hey! The word “neoliberal” appears frequently. More...

By Alex Usher. I haven’t worked on apprenticeship projects much in the last few years, but one of my current gigs has got me thinking about the area again.  And one thing that I apparently missed completely was a new (well, new to me anyway) effort to harmonize apprenticeship program sequencing nationally (details here). More...