Who, What, How, Where, When and Why: Higher Education in the News

Feb 13, 2026

In 2026, I am thinking, writing, crafting, and consulting with a purpose in mind: that of the educator. To me, the educator spans the wide range of work that I do, both formally and informally, in and outside of postsecondary institutions, workplaces, conferences, professional development sessions, and on/through social media.

It’s been an intense week with a range of stories of higher education in Canada. It’s made me think about the whole adage of journalism (the 5 Ws and How) and applying it to reflect on higher education in my country.

Who should we educate and who has access to higher education?

What should we be educating for?

How should we be educating?

Where and when is higher education available?

And, perhaps most of all why should we invest in higher education?

There were a flurry of stories that is causing me to ponder these questions, which are always salient, but sometimes opaque in government and institutional announcements.

This week, the provincial government in Ontario announced a major funding package for postsecondary institutions in the province, including a revision of tuition and student aid practices. The announcement heralded a new focus “on delivering programs that align with student and labour-market demand supported by increased, predictable funding,” attention to the complex needs of the province, including rural, Northern, Indigenous and francophone students.

This announcement of “increased, predictable funding” came after many calls from universities, colleges, their various associations, unions and faculty associations about the need for higher education investment after years of financial cutbacks that have led to the disappearance of postsecondary programs, layoffs of staff and faculty, and the ballooning of institutional deficits. While the announcement suggests a focus on programs that “align with student and labour-market demand,” it doesn’t specify what sorts of skills and competencies are necessary to be “delivered” let alone fostered, nurtured and enriched through higher education. (part of the “why” of higher education).

In another much-heralded story, a site for a new, Inuit-led university in Arviat, Nunavut with sweeping views of Hudson Bay is part of a larger infrastructure plan that includes housing, waste and water treatment and an airport. The university is to serve 100 students and include satellite campus, perhaps answering the “who” of higher education).

In another story, first published in French and then translated in English, spoke more of “who” presumably doesn’t “deserve” higher education. It discussed how academics who taught courses to provide access to CEGEP (Quebec’s comprehensive post-secondary “college”) to prisoners was at risk of closing due to cutbacks by Correctional Services Canada.

I wove this later story into a sociology class debate about crime and deviance to debate the academics’ point that education could prevent recidivism among prisoners (another “why”).

These stories are discontinuous fragments, and yet, we can weave them together to reflect on our social and cultural perceptions of higher education, in whom we should invest, and the conditions that are created for this access. Of course, there is and always will be limited funds in a largely-publicly funded system, and yet, the larger dialogue of why and how and what and when of higher education, how it responds to vastly shifting and disrupted landscape of work, needed skills and competencies, ever-emergent skills and labour shortages, and how it develops young and less young people and their talents and abilities. Sadly this latter part, which I would argue is central to the “why” of people, seems almost always to fade from view.

Graduation day!

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