The World of Higher Education Podcast Listen now →

The World of Higher Education Podcast Listen now →

Category: Access

The Why and How of Holistic Admissions

A few universities in Canada are currently considering introducing holistic admissions.  But what does that mean, exactly?  And is it a good idea?  Making selections “holistically” is simply making decisions on things in addition to secondary school academic results.  In most of the world, this idea is pretty heretical.  Secondary school results (or matriculation exams such as China’s gaokao or the French baccalauréat) are the be-all and end-all where university admissions are concerned.  In these countries, there is a deep

Read More »
December 4, 2023 1 Comment

Important But Not Worth It? Some Thoughts

Last month, my colleague Andrew Parkin at the Environics Institute published a fascinating little piece entitled Is Post-secondary Education is a Waste of Time?, which looks at Canadians’ evolving views on the worth of higher education (Andrew is a former Director General of the Council of Ministers of Education, Canada, so we can safely infer that this is not an expression of his own feelings) Environics asked two questions: “these days, a young person in Canada can’t expect to get

Read More »
November 6, 2023 2 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

Read More »
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

Read More »
November 14, 2022 No Comments

The Affordability of Canadian Universities, 2020, Part 1

The affordability of higher education is vital for the accessibility of higher education.  Unfortunately, much of the debate around affordability is conducted in terms simply of prices, and usually inflation-unadjusted ones at that.  But while price is an input to affordability, it is not the whole story.  In fact, it is exactly half the story: the numerator, if you will.  The other half, the denominator, is capacity to pay.  And yet for some reason we almost never bring this into

Read More »
November 8, 2022 4 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.

Subscribe

Search Posts

Search Publications

Social Media

Linkedin Youtube Spotify

Recent Posts

More thoughts on...