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Hausse constante du SUP privé

Sur le blog "Histoires d'universités" de Pierre Dubois. Établissements d’enseignement supérieur technique privés et consulaires, autorisés à délivrer un diplôme visé par le ministre chargé de l’enseignement supérieur et pouvant conférer le grade de master à leurs titulaires (arrêté du 2-7-2018). Plus...

Les BU et le nouveau jargon

Sur le blog "Histoires d'universités" de Pierre Dubois. 48ème Congrès de l’Association des Directeurs de Bibliothèque Universitaire, Brest, 25-27 septembre 2018.
Introduction du texte de présentation de la thématique. Mon commentaire : les directeurs/directrices de BU ne semblent pas résister, hélas, à la novlangue des néo-managers de l’enseignement supérieur (mots en gras ci-dessous), au jargon porté par les Communicants et les Community Managers. Plus...

Lorraine. Justice est faite ?

Sur le blog "Histoires d'universités" de Pierre Dubois. Printemps 2017 : université de Lorraine, recrutement annulé de deux maîtres de conférences. Août 2018 : le Tribunal administratif, jugeant au fond, annule cette décision du conseil d’administration lorrain. Plus...

History of Canadian PSE Part II (to 1940)

By Alex Usher. If you look at the history of Canadian post-secondary education, there are two particularly notable things going on with respect to the first four decades of the twentieth century.  The first is that western Canada got universities.  And the second is that Eastern universities entered into contracts with the state. More...

“Free Fees” in New Zealand

By Alex Usher. Tuition-free universities aren’t new to New Zealand; in fact the whole country was more or less tuition free until 1991.  It was in that year that a former Labour government (of an unusually pro-market, privatizing bent – the party has changed quite a bit since then) introduced fees and then, a year later, a system of income contingent loans to help pay for it all.  Since then, fees policy in New Zealand has roughly mirrored Canada’s, with very significant annual rises in the 1990s followed by much slower growth after about 2000 (difference: their tuition growth rate picked up a bit after 2010 while ours didn’t). More...

The System Works

By Alex Usher. There has been much wailing these last couple of weeks about a “sensational” revelation made by Global News (and then again a couple of days later by CBC, as if Global didn’t exist, because that’s how media works) that the University of Waterloo admissions department has a special, secret list of high schools, indicating which ones seem to grade easier than others and also how to adjust grades from these schools so that they can judge applicants on a more or less common scale (the Ottawa Citizen published the actual list, here). More...

Ontario Government Announces Huge Increase in International Student Numbers

By Alex Usher. Last week, freshman Ontario Finance Minister Vic Fedeli appeared before the Economic Club in Toronto and, reading from the best-selling book “Oh My God Who Knew the Previous Government Left the Finances in Such Terrible Shape: A Guide to Your First Provincial Budget”, announced that the actual, real, pinkie swear, true budget deficit for this year was $15 billion rather than $6 billion and that to help close the gap, Ontario colleges and universities would be asked to increase their intake of international students by 25,000 or so. More...

New Brunswick Manifesto Analysis

By Alex Usher. Once upon a time, back when Frank McKenna’s was premier, New Brunswick was seen as something of a leader in Canadian public policy.  Balancing budgets, championing official languages, investing in telecommunications and the internet, creating jobs (even if a lot of them were in call centres) – New Brunswick was seen as having understood the nature of the Maritimes’ long-term challenges and moved decisively to address them. More...

League-Table Rankings, Sumo Style

By Alex Usher. Most university rankings (U-Multirank is the big exception) take a league table format originally used by esteemed psychologist, eugenicist and baseball enthusiast James McKeen Cattell in his early rankings early 20^th century (for more on Cattell see back here).  One effects of borrowing league tables as a metaphor is that there is an implicit assumption that the inhabitants of that table are able to move up and down the league table as baseball or football teams do. More...

Targeted Free Tuition: A Global Analysis

By Alex Usher. Good morning, all. Today, HESA is publishing (jointly, with the Higher Education Policy Institute in London, England) a paper entitled, Targeted Free Tuition: A Global Analysis. This paper is the product of months of surveying an emerging trend in government-financed student aid and what is arguably the most important new idea in higher education financing currently floating around the world. More...