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Category: Apprenticeships, Skills & Trades

(Another) New Report on Skills

Late last week the Business Higher Education Roundtable published the results of a survey of its members (big Canadian businesses) on the issue of skills.  The results were…intriguing. Let’s start with the classic question: are there skills shortages?  Here’s what respondents said. Figure 1: To What Degree are Skill Shortages an Issue for your Sector/Company? Yes, there are skills shortages, but a) not many think they are that significant, and big business thinks they’re better insulated than other companies in

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April 10, 2018 1 Comment

Humans Wanted

On Monday, the Royal Bank put out an interesting…well, what was it?  Research Paper?  Discussion Paper?  Idea-concept thingy?…called Humans Wanted: How Canadian Youth Can Thrive in the Age of Disruption.  It’s a bit of a mixed bag as a paper, but ultimately it’s not a bad start to the RBC’s “FutureLaunch” project on youth and skills. The core of the paper is an examination of jobs and skills in the new economy, their vulnerability to automation and their growth potential using

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March 28, 2018 1 Comment

A Challenge and An Opportunity in College Education

Earlier this week the Manitoba Government released a report that I and my colleague Yves Pelletier worked on for most of last year, the Manitoba College Review (you can read the report here). It was a challenging assignment, but I am very grateful to the many people to everyone who spent time with us and contributed to the report, and to all the alumni who answered our survey.  In terms of system governance, we made some fairly sweeping recommendations, ones that give government

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March 22, 2018 4 Comments

The Budget Speech Bill Morneau Should Give

“…Mr. Speaker, we know that living standards depend on productivity, productivity depends on innovation, and innovation depends on skills, technology, and competition.  So we are going to ramp up on all of them.  This won’t be easy.  It won’t be quick.  We are not doing this with an eye to the next election; it’s a marathon not a sprint.  But we have to start somewhere. Skills Let’s start with skills.  While recognizing that having a skilled labour force is a

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February 27, 2018 1 Comment

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 here). Wait a minute, you say – weren’t apprenticeships always harmonized?  Isn’t that what Red Seal is all about? Well, sort of.  Red Seal was about harmonizing outcomes.  Basically, Red

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May 11, 2017 2 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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