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Category: Canada

How’s the Alberta PSE Re-Think Going? (Part 2)

Yesterday, I discussed the mechanics of the Alberta 2030 report that McKinsey is producing.  Today, I want to talk about where the review seems to be heading.  One kind soul provided me with a briefing paper of a recent roundtable which highlights “Emerging Goals” that are coming out of the exercise.  Allow me to summarize: The document suggests four “big goals” (Improve Access & Strengthen the Student Experience, Develop Skills for Jobs, Strengthen Innovation and Commercialization, Improve Internationalization) and two “enablers”

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November 11, 2020 1 Comment

How’s the Alberta PSE Re-Think Going? (Part 1)

You may remember that in the Spring, that Government of Alberta signed a contract with McKinsey to conduct a big review of Post-Secondary Education in the province.  I want to check in on how that’s going.  Today, I’ll look at the process; tomorrow I’ll look at what conclusions the government (or McKinsey – it’s hard to tell) is coming to.  Ready?  Then I’ll begin. Based on the Request for Proposals the province released back at the start of this process in March

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November 10, 2020 No Comments

New Student Debt Data

Over the summer, Statistics Canada did a data dump on student debt from the 2015 National Graduate Survey.  I haven’t really had a chance to dive into it until now, but here’s a quick round-up. Let’s start with the proportion of students who are borrowing (see Figure 1).  Rates of borrowing vary quite a bit by level of education: lowest at the doctoral level and highest in professional programs such as law and medicine.  Neither is surprising: professional programs have

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November 5, 2020 No Comments

The Damage Done (So Far)

It’s now midnight eastern time and it’s looking more and more like we are not going to know who won the U.S. election until later today or perhaps even late this week (Pennsylvania probably will not report fully until Friday).   But it’s not too late to take a few moments to take a good look at the damage done to American higher education over the past four years, and where the system might be headed next. In some ways the

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November 4, 2020 1 Comment

Canada Christian College

There has been some brouhaha in Ontario about Canada Christian College (CCC), an evangelical school in Whitby, being given the title “university” and being “allowed to offer degrees”.  There is both less and more to this story than meets the eye.  Allow me to walk you through it. Let’s start at the beginning: when does a university become a university and who gets to grant degrees in Ontario?  Well, until 2000, you needed an Act of the Legislature.  CCC received

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November 3, 2020 No Comments

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One Thought to Start Your Day is our founder and CEO Alex Usher’s popular daily blog, brimming with up-to-the-minute insights and informed opinions on today’s higher education industry.

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