By Alex Usher. The first thing you need to understand about Alberta is the massively outsized space that the University of Alberta has historically occupied in the province.  Alberta was very quick to establish a university – it did so ahead of both Saskatchewan (which, prior to WWI, was considered the more dynamic of the two 1905 accession provinces) and British Columbia. More...

By Alex Usher. Last Thursday, the Ontario Superior Court struck down the Ford Government’s “Student Choice Initiative”, a program of voluntary student-unionism (VSU) it imposed last January (see here for a refresher).  The court decision is here.  It’s a full defeat for the provincial government, the policy is declared void, but it’s unclear if and how student organizations will be compensated for lost revenue from the fall term. More...

By Alex Usher. Remember about a month ago when I noted how several Ontario colleges now had international student numbers above 50% of total enrolment?  And about how in some cases this was being done by small town colleges establishing “partnerships” with private vocational colleges in the Greater Toronto Area. More...

By Alex Usher. For various reasons, I never quite got round to reviewing it at the time, but it’s worth examining because once we get over superclusters (please, let’s all get over superclusters), the country is going to be looking for some new organizing framework for innovation and growth policy. I suspect that this “intangibles” lens might be it. More...

By Alex Usher. I’ve been trying to read more about the history of Canadian institutions.  One very short pamphlet-like read is called Hatching the Cowbird’s Egg by David R. Murray, about the origin of the University of Guelph (the title vaguely make sense if you read the whole book; in context it’s a reference to the fact that Guelph is a weirdly bolted-together set of institutions). More...