The World of Higher Education Podcast Listen now →

The World of Higher Education Podcast Listen now →

Category: Canada

Why are Toronto Students so Friggin’ Miserable? (Part Two)

Today we revisit the issue of why student dissatisfaction in Canada seems to be concentrated in Toronto, aka the Centre of the Universe. We’ll try to answer the simple question – do Toronto schools fare poorly because a disproportionate number of Toronto students live in their parents’ basements? Our data source today is the HESA-administered survey that fuels the satisfaction results in The Globe and Mail’s Canadian University Report, in which students are asked to express satisfaction on a scale

Read More »
October 21, 2011 No Comments

Ducking the Issue

Man, did last week’s Globe editorial on reforming higher education get the bien pensants’ knickers in a knot, or what? Constance Adamson of OCUFA took the predictable “everything would be fine if only there was more money” line. Over at Maclean’s, Todd Pettigrew made a passionate defence of research and teaching being inextricably entwined, largely echoing a piece from the previous week by McGill’s Stephen Saideman, who argued that universities aren’t teaching vs. research but teaching and research. Methinks some

Read More »
October 19, 2011 1 Comment

Well, That Was Interesting

The Report of the Expert Panel on R&D, that is. It’s an intriguing and well-written piece of work (kudos to Peter Nicholson), at least as much for what it doesn’t say as what it does. There are three things this report does extremely well: i) it explains the mind-boggling number of tiny programs the federal government supports, ii) it graphically shows how the Scientific Research and Experimental Development program massively overshadows all other panels combined and iiI), it amusingly tells

Read More »
October 18, 2011 No Comments

Interest on Student Loans – Time to Go Dutch

News out of the U.S. suggests that one possible casualty of that country’s budget crisis is the in-school interest subsidy on student loans. Since Canadian governments almost always end up copying the Americans on student aid eventually (see: income-based grants, rules on institutional designation, workforce-related loan forgiveness, etc.), this seems like a good time for Canada to review its own policies on student loan interest. Some countries, like Germany and many developing countries, charge no interest at all on student

Read More »
October 6, 2011 2 Comments

Why are Toronto Students so Friggin’ Miserable? (Part One)

Seriously, why is it that every time we do a survey for the Globe and Mail, the Toronto schools all look so weak in terms of student satisfaction? The best of the bunch – Ryerson – gets a B+, which is average for the country as a whole, but everyone else regularly gets Bs and B-minuses – or worse. Objectively, this seems weird. U of T is by any definition a world-class university. York has the challenge of being a

Read More »
October 3, 2011 1 Comment
Load More

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...