Being Thankful
by Watson Scott Swail, CEO, Educational Policy Institute/EPI International In the United States, Americans will celebrate the Thanksgiving holiday tomorrow, which is basically an opportunity to watch football, eat and drink too much, and spend time with relatives that you have desperately tried to avoid for the previous 364 days. Okay, not always true: sometimes you don’t eat too much. Thanksgiving has traditionally been held … Continue reading Being Thankful
Taking it to the Streets: Student Protests and Higher Education Policy
by Watson Scott Swail, CEO, Educational Policy Institute/EPI International This past Wednesday, British higher education students took to the streets of London to decry the Conservative government’s plans to significantly raise tuition fees. It has been reported that the government plans to raise the fees by as much as three times the current price to £9,000, or about $14,000 US/CDN. The protest involved an estimated … Continue reading Taking it to the Streets: Student Protests and Higher Education Policy
Innovation, Exploitation, and Instigation (and it still isn’t enough!)
by Dr. Watson Scott Swail, CEO, Educational Policy Institute/EPI International Last week I was privileged to participate in a special seminar hosted by Stanford University’s SCOPE Center and the Canadian Education Association (CEA) at the University of Toronto. The event, Achieving Equity through Innovation: A Canada-United States Colloquium, featured educators, practitioners, and policymakers from the US and Canada, including Jim Shelton of the US Department of Education, … Continue reading Innovation, Exploitation, and Instigation (and it still isn’t enough!)
Where the Hell is Superman?
By Watson Scott Swail, President & CEO, EPI International & Educational Policy Institute If you are an educator, and unless you have been hiding under a rock for the past month, everyone is talking about Waiting for Superman, the new documentary by Davis Guggenheim, the producer/director of Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth, which won an Oscar a few years back. Superman has brought much-needed focus … Continue reading Where the Hell is Superman?
Learning to Give
I was going to write on the MESA project findings in Canada this week, a project led by EPI over the past five years in partnership with Queens University. However, I’ll put that off for another week due to an article in yesterday’s Globe and Mail.
It seems billionaires Bill Gates and Warren Buffett are in China on their international tour to recruit the richest people in the world to join the “Giving Club” (my coin, not theirs). Continue reading Learning to Give
The Swail Letter on Higher Education 