Category: Canada

2018/19 Enrolment Data

Last Thursday was that frabjous day which every higher education nerd has pencilled into their calendar: where Statscan publishes post-secondary enrolment data and for one brief moment we go from having enrolment data which is 37 months out of date to a mere 25 months out of date.  Now, the big picture will be familiar to everyone who read The State of Post-Secondary Education in Canada, because I already went and got most of this data from institutional websites, but the

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That Future Skills Council Paper

Last week, the Future Skills Council released a document called “Canada – A Learning Nation: A Skilled, Agile Workforce Ready to Shape the Future”.  I thought we should delve into it early in the week before we all get too tired.  So here goes: For starters, we should be clear about who is releasing this.  This is the Future Skills Council (a group of worthies from across the country who advise the Minister of Employment and Social Development on…things…) and not the Future Skills Centre (the

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The University of Calgary’s New Strategic Plan

Back to Alberta.  I know, some of you may be sick of me talking about Alberta, but a) it’s the most interesting policy scene in Canada right now and b) this is how the rest of the country feels when I talk about Ontario, so fair’s fair.  Back, specifically, to the University of Calgary, which has – in response to significant government cutbacks and government complaints about the province’s universities being unresponsive to changing economic priorities, more or less decided

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Governing Boards, Singular and Plural

Last week’s blogs (here and here) about the Alberta Vision 2030 plan seem to have been quite popular.  The one topic I received the most mail about was the governance piece and the idea of putting multiple institutions under a single Board, which seemed to confuse a lot of people.  So I thought I would take this morning to run a little class on what the many American experiments in system governance have to teach us (and make no mistake, the model

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How’s the Alberta PSE Re-Think Going? (Part 2)

Yesterday, I discussed the mechanics of the Alberta 2030 report that McKinsey is producing.  Today, I want to talk about where the review seems to be heading.  One kind soul provided me with a briefing paper of a recent roundtable which highlights “Emerging Goals” that are coming out of the exercise.  Allow me to summarize: The document suggests four “big goals” (Improve Access & Strengthen the Student Experience, Develop Skills for Jobs, Strengthen Innovation and Commercialization, Improve Internationalization) and two “enablers”

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