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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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Jobs: Hot and Not-So-Hot
Remember when everyone was freaking out because there were too many sociology graduates and not enough welders? When otherwise serious people like Ken Coates complained about the labour market being distorted by the uninformed choices of 17-19 year-olds? 2015 seems like a long time ago. Just for fun the other day, I
Provincial Budgets 2017
Springtime brings with it two certainties: 1) massive, irritating weekend traffic jams in Toronto as the city grants permits to close down Yonge street for a parade to virtually any group of yahoos, thus making it impossible to go from the cities east to west ends and 2) provincial budgets.
Statistical Deceptions on Student Debt
Every couple of years, the Canadian Federation of Students (CFS) produces a “research paper” to provide a new “evidence-based” spin to back up its eternal demand for free tuition. Last month, they put out a new version, this one entitled The Political Economy of Student Debt in Canada. The theme
Trade-offs in Apprenticeships
I haven’t worked on apprenticeship projects much in the last few years, but one of my current gigs has got me thinking about the area again. And one thing that I apparently missed completely was a new (well, new to me anyway) effort to harmonize apprenticeship program sequencing nationally (details
Why Education in IT Fields is Different
A couple of years ago, an American academic by the name of James Bessen wrote a fascinating book called Learning by Doing: The Real Connection Between Innovation, Wages and Wealth. (It’s brilliant. Read it). It’s an examination of what happened to wages and productivity over the course of the industrial revolution,
Conservative Leadership Platform Analysis
So, I just read through all the thirteen leadership candidates’ websites, looking for their thoughts on all the stuff this blog cares about: post-secondary education, skills, science, innovation, youth, etc. The things I do for you people. Actually, it was a pretty quick exercise because it turns out almost no
Naylor Report, Part II
Morning all. Sorry about the service interruption. Nice to be back. So, I promised you some more thoughts about the Fundamental Science Review. Now that I’ve lot of time to think about it, I think I’m actually surprised by what it doesn’t say, says and how many questions remain open. What’s best
Apprenticeships: Canada vs. Germany
Delayed Trans-Atlantic flights and missed connections eliminated Alex’s time for writing an all new blog today. However, in the wake of this IRPP articleon adopting the German “dual education system” in Canada, we are running this 2013 post on the significant and generally overlooked differences between German and Canadian apprenticeships. Enjoy!
Naylor Report, Take 1
People are asking why I haven’t talked about the Naylor Report (aka the Review of Fundamental Science) yet. The answer, briefly, is i) I’m swamped ii) there’s a lot to talk about in there and iii) I want to have some time to think it over. But I did have
British Columbia: Provincial Manifesto Analysis
On May 9th, our left-coasters go to the polls. What are their options as far a post-secondary education is concerned? Let’s start with the governing Liberals. As is often the case with ruling parties, some of their promises are things that are both baked into the fiscal framework and will
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