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Author: Alex Usher

Stacking and Micro-credentials

Just a short one today, on micro-credentials. In theory, micro-credentials can serve one of two purposes.  One is that they can be used as bespoke workforce-oriented training to fill very specific/niche labour market ends; the other is that they can be used – like credits – to stack towards large credentials such as diplomas, master’s degrees, and others.  If you draw up the policy framework for micro-credentials in the right way, they can achieve either or both of these goals

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November 16, 2022 3 Comments

The Affordability of Canadian Universities, Part 4

The final objection to the idea I’ve been pushing for the last couple of weeks – namely, that higher education might be getting more affordable (which it is, to some extent, by most tuition-related measures of affordability) – is that tuition-related measures of affordability are in adequate and don’t cover and so do not do justice to the current “the cost of living crisis”.  Broadly, this is true.  But, I suggest, it’s not actually true for everyone, and even for

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November 15, 2022 No Comments

The Affordability of Canadian Universities, Part 3

It turns out that a lot of you really hate the idea that Canada might be experiencing some success with respect to affordability in universities.  Critics seem to focus mostly on one of two factors.  I will deal with the first criticism today and leave the second to tomorrow. Let’s start with the time frame issue.  The problem is the availability of data.  Statistics Canada’s current data on student “tuition and fees” only goes back to 2006-07, but with only

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November 14, 2022 No Comments

One Podcast to Start Your Day: Internationalization

Good morning.  Today we have another episode of One Podcast to Start Your Day.  This time we invited Nancy Johnston (Independent consultant and former Vice President Students and International at Simon Fraser University), Andrew Ness (Dean, International at Humber College), and Michael Savage (Manager of International Markets and Mobility at Higher Education Strategy Associates) to talk about internationalization: from recruitment patterns, diversification, the international student experience, and how institutional, provincial, and federal policies affects all of the latter.  The full

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November 10, 2022 No Comments

The Affordability of Canadian Universities, 2020, Part 2

Ok, so I got a little bit too excited in yesterday’s blog, when I indicated I could show how the increase in student aid spending since 2006 has improved affordability.  I forgot that while I do have aggregate data on grant expenditures across the country, data on how this money is split by institutional type is pretty scarce.  The Canada and Quebec student aid programs do publish data like this, but for some reason neither government chooses to leave older

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November 9, 2022 No Comments

One Thought to Start Your Day

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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