The World of Higher Education

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 Hugo Chavez, Nicolas Maduro, and their Bolivarian Socialist regime over the past 25 years.

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.Download PDF transcript

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 challenging Gaokao system and on to university in China and beyond.  Have a listen.Download PDF transcript

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 of time.Over the past couple of years, Jamil's been working extensively on the issue of equality of access in different parts of the world, in particular in low- and middle-income countries.  You will not be shocked to learn that higher education access is unequal everywhere. What is more interesting perhaps is the fact that these gaps vary *significantly* by country, and not always in ways that you would think. Have a listen.Download PDF transcript

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 MarsicanoProduced by: Tiffany MacLennan and Samantha PufekPDF 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 GuerinProduced by: Tiffany MacLennan and Samantha PufekPDF Transcript