Author: Alex Usher

A First Look At 2021 Education Census Data

Last Thursday, the only national statistics agency we’ve got released a batch of data from the 2021 census relating to education.  There is some interesting stuff in there, particularly with respect to the relationship between education and occupation.  I can’t get into all of it here – seems like the kind of thing I could spend most of the holidays fooling around on – but I want to dig into a couple of key pieces of data. Before I get

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One Podcast to Start Your Day-Newfoundland and Labrador

Good morning.  In exciting news, One Podcast to Start Your Day can now be found on all of your favourite podcast apps and includes a RSS feed. This episode, and the two previous ones, can be found here: https://anchor.fm/optsyd. Today we have different version of One Podcast to Start Your Day.  We invited Dale Kirby to our virtual table for a one-on-one discussion of post-secondary education in Newfoundland and Labrador. Dale’s background as a Professor in the Faculty of Education

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Laurentian (Really the Last This Time)

OK, I thought this was all over with the AG’s report.  But on Monday the very last shoe dropped, so here I am again.   What happened?  Well, you may recall that in the initial affidavit submitted by Laurentian to the Companies Creditor Protection Act (CCAA) proceedings, two exhibits – labelled “EEE” and “FFF” – were kept sealed from the public.  The former was a letter from the Minister of Colleges and Universities, Ross Romano, to Laurentian University, dated 21 January

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Data Priorities

You all know I complain a lot about data in Canada.  So today, I thought I’d assemble a wish list: a set of priorities for developing a better system of higher education data, along with some thoughts about how these measures could be implemented as part of a larger, overall accountability agenda Now, I am going to focus on the need for new data but there is a lot that could be done to make better use of existing data. 

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Student Well-Being

Note: this article contains references to sexual violence, harassment, and suicide/self-harm. For a couple of decades now, the American College Health Association (ACHA) has been administering a ridiculously long and detailed survey called the National College Health Assessment, which goes under the unwieldy title of ACHA-NCHA.  Since 2013, a number of Canadian institutions have taken part in this as well, which allows for some reasonably interesting comparisons over time. (N.b. since Fall 2019, a new iteration of the survey has

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