The World of Higher Education

Today's guest is Dr. Pushkar — just one name — the Director and Chief Executive of the International Centre Goa, and a frequent commentator on higher education in India. Dr. Pushkar and Alex cover how the Modi government is attempting to raise standards through the creation of a National Research Foundation, a system of “Institutions of Eminence” and by inviting foreign universities to set up camp...

Today’s guest is Daniel A. Bell , a professor in the Faculty of Law at the University of Hong Kong.  Originally from Montreal, he became a specialist in this study of Confucius from the angle of political theory, worked his way into a position at the famed Tsinghua university in Beijing before being named Dean of the School of Political Science and Public Administration at Shandong University. Bel...

Joining us this week is Romania’s Minister of Education, Ligia Deca. Ministers in Romania are not generally speaking elected politicians — the country works on a model similar to that in France — and over the past two decades, an astoundingly high proportion of Education Ministers in Romania are university Presidents or Senate Chairs on temporary leave from their position. Ligia’s experience both...

We're back! Welcome back to the World of Higher Education, Season 2. In this episode, Alex Usher is joined by one of his favourite authors, Jeff Selingo , author of Who Gets in and Why: A Year Inside College Admissions . If you’re not American, listen hard to this podcast. Drink in all the weird details about the admissions process, and the amount of effort selective institutions put into identify...

On the season finale of the World of Higher Education Podcast, we’re joined by Zach Bleemer, currently an Assistant Professor of Economics at Yale

Joining us on today’s episode of the World of Higher Education Podcast is Annalisa Pavan from University of Padova Italy. She's been studying Saudi higher education for many years. In particular, the way the country's most prestigious scholarship program, the scholarship of the custodian of the Two Holy Mosques functions. This episode discusses how the country's human resource development system i...

Last fall, a quartet of Canadian higher education scholars – Julia Eastman, Olivier Bégin-Caouette Glen Jones, and Claude René Trottier, published a book with U of T Press entitled University Governance in Canada: Navigating Complexity . Joining on the World of Higher Education Podcast today is one of those four authors, Julia Eastman.  Read the book: University Governance in Canada: Navigating Co...

If you’re in North America, you know that one of the perennial debates in higher education finance is about the efficacy of performance-based funding, or PBF, with the bulk of the academic evidence suggesting in one way or another that such schemes do not achieve their purported aims. On this week’s episode of The World of Higher Education Podcast, Dr. Ben Jongbloed from the Centre for Higher Educ...

On this episode of the World of Higher Education Podcast, Javier Botero joins us to discuss Colombian higher education. These days he's a lead consultant at the World Bank, but formerly he was the Vice Minister of Higher Education in Columbia, and he's here with us today to provide an overview of recent policy developments in the nation.

On today’s episode of the World of Higher Education podcast, we’re talking about Nigerian higher education. Economically and politically, Nigeria is one of Africa's powerhouses. Yet, when it comes to higher education, it trails significantly. To help us understand why that's the case, Dr. Olabisi Deji-Folutile joins us. Dr. Deji-Folutile is editor-in-chief of Frank Talk Now and chief operating off...

Bryan Alexander joins us to talk about his new book, Universities on Fire, Higher Education in the Climate Crisis .  Download PDF transcript

Join Alex Usher as he talks all things Irish higher education. Joining as expert guide to the terrain is guest, Ellen Hazelkorn, principal at BH Associates, a Higher Education consultancy in Ireland, a Professor Emerita at the Technological University of Dublin and one of the sharpest all-around minds in European higher education. Download PDF transcript

This week’s guest is Enora Bennetot Pruvot, Deputy Director Governance, Funding & Public Policy Development at the European University Association. She joins Alex Usher from Brussels to talk about the EUA’s recently-released University Autonomy Scorecard, of which she was a co-author. Download PDF transcript

This week’s guest is Juan Carlos Navarro , International expert in higher education, innovation and digital talent; Senior advisor to several international institutions and universities; and Member of the international faculty of the Instituto de Estudios Superiores de Administración, in Caracas, Venezuela. He joins us talk about what has happened to higher education in Venezuela under the rule of...

This week’s guest on The World of Higher Education Podcast is Ethan Schrum, Associate Professor of history at Asuza Pacific University in California. Ethan is the author of a very nice work called The Instrumental University: Education in the Service of the National Agenda Since World War II which puts into perspective a very important piece of the history of higher education in North America. Dow...

This week’s guest on the World of Higher Education Podcast is Yi-Lin Chiang , author of Study Gods: How the New Chinese Elite Prepare for Global Competition which was published in 2022 by Princeton University Press. It’s a really extraordinary work of ethnography, following a group of students from a pair of elite Beijing secondary schools as they make their way towards China’s extremely challengi...

This week’s The World of Higher Education podcast features the work of Dr. Elizabeth Buckner from the Ontario Institute of Studies in Education at the University of Toronto. Dr. Buckner is the author of Degrees of Dignity: Arab Higher Education in the Global Era, published by the U of T Press in 2022. Download PDF transcript

This week, Alex Usher is joined by guest, Dr. Jonathan Jansen. Jansen is a professor of education at Stellenbosch University, and the President of the Academy of Science in South Africa. He joins Alex Usher to discuss his harrowing new book, Corrupted , a study in chronic dysfunction in South African universities. Download PDF transcript

This week's guest is Jamil Salmi, former tertiary education co-ordinator with the World Bank, global higher education consultant and all-around mensch. Back in the mid-to-late 2000s, Jamil was perhaps the world-expert on the phenomenon of World-Class universities and his recipe for creating them — money plus talent plus good governance, and let stir for a few decades — has certainly stood the test...

Join host Alex Usher as he meets with Chris Marsicano, Assistant Professor of Educational Studies at Davidson College in North Carolina, to discuss what's ahead for Higher Education in the United States in 2023. Host: Alex Usher  Guest: Chris Marsicano Produced by: Tiffany MacLennan and Samantha Pufek PDF Transcript

In this episode, Alex Usher is joined by Dave Guerin, Chief Executive and Editor-in-Chief of Tertiary Insight, a higher education news service based in Wellington, New Zealand. The subject: the higher education record of recently resigned New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern. Host: Alex Usher  Guest: Dave Guerin Produced by: Tiffany MacLennan and Samantha Pufek PDF Transcript

In this episode, Andrew Norton, Professor in the Practice of Higher Education at the Centre for Social Research and Methods at the Australian National University joins host Alex Usher to talk about the new Labour Government’s “Universities Accord”. Andrew has been a long-time observer of the higher education scene in Australia.  For many years, he wrote the Mapping Higher Education in Australia, w...