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Category: One Thought to Start Your Day

Application Frustration

It’s application season. Time used to be, I could give y’all some really good insight into application trends by using data from the Ontario University Application Centre as I did here, in 2018.  And here, in 2021. All thanks to a modicum of data transparency Until three years ago, OUAC was pretty good about providing data on applicants. It would tell you about applicant numbers, it would tell you about first-choice applications, and it would tell you about total applications.

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February 2, 2026 No Comments

Transnational Strategy Now

The world of transnational education – that is, the provision of education in one country by universities based abroad – is getting very interesting these days. In particular, branch campuses have returned to the centre of the industry’s activities in a way they have not been for well over a decade. Canada’s post-secondary system – which has always been a laggard in this area – risks getting left even further behind, unless institutions up their game substantially in the next

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January 28, 2026 No Comments

How Students Choose

It’s application season, so I thought I would put some thought together on the factors that drive applications. I hope you enjoy it. How and when do young people choose to go to post-secondary education? This is one of those questions that made sense thirty years ago, but now it’s just not all that interesting. Most students in high school know they are staying in school after grade 12. It’s not a decision, it’s just something they absorb from their

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January 27, 2026 No Comments

Campus Total Defence

This blog doubles as an invitation to a very cool event in Ottawa on March 23rd. See the end of blog for details. If there is anything Canada should take from President Trump’s deeply disturbing rants about Greenland over the past couple of weeks, it is that our country is very definitely a target. The fascist government in power in the United States genuinely believes both that might makes right and that the entire hemisphere is rightfully theirs. The threat to national

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January 26, 2026 2 Comments

How Bad is Student/Youth Unemployment These Days?

Interesting question. It’s a tricky answer. Let’s dive in. Let’s start by looking at the issue of unemployment – that is, the percentage of people who are in the labour market but do not have work (i.e. it excludes people who aren’t interested). Figure 1 shows unemployment rates for full-time students and non-students aged 20-24 for the past fifty years (I exclude part-time students because they are an odd and heterogenous grouping).  Figure 1: Unemployment Rates during School Months for

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January 21, 2026 2 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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