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Category: Canada

Two Important Statscan Papers

Statistics Canada released a couple of papers in the last month which unfairly got zero play in the general media, so thought I would pick them up and amplify them here. The first one, by the ever-excellent Marc Frenette, is called Do Youth From Lower- and Higher-Income Families Benefit Equally From Postsecondary Education? and it’s a pretty important question from a public policy point of view, since a good deal of the rationale for widening access is premised on the

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May 24, 2019 1 Comment

Moneyball

I was at a conference last week in Italy, much of which focused around the use of data in institutional decision-making (technically it was a conference on rankings, but increasingly rankings are being seen as a data source for institutional benchmarking and strategizing rather than as a consumer tool, so there was a lot of overlap). One of the most interesting presentations involved a lot of discussion on the sheer amount of data now available on institutional performance (which, depending

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May 14, 2019 2 Comments

Performance-Based Funding 101: Alternatives and Next Steps

Yesterday, I explained how the distribution of funds might occur in a single-envelope PBF system (that is, the dominant system in North America, where indicators generate scores for each institution which then govern the distribution of a pre-set amount of money).  And while that is the likely way a PBF system will work in Ontario, it’s not the only possible way and indeed the government has left some hints that it is thinking about an alternative method.  The way the

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April 26, 2019 No Comments

Performance-Based Funding 101: Measuring Skills

Yesterday,  I critiqued most of the indicators being suggested for the new Ontario PBF system.  But I left one out because I thought it was worth a blog all on its own, and that is the indicator related to “skills and competencies”.  It’s the indicator that is likely to draw the most heat from the higher education traditionalists, and so it is worth drilling into. In principle, measuring the ability of institutions to provide students more of the skills that allow

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April 24, 2019 7 Comments

PEI Platform Analysis

Prince Edward Island goes to the polls tomorrow, and while it is Canada’s littlest province with an electorate 10% smaller than the University of Toronto’s student body (unbelievably, the provincial budget is actually 25% smaller), but this is a pan-Canadian blog and by God no provincial budget or election is too small for us at HESA Towers to cover.  So, buckle up to find out what the parties are offering. Let’s start with the NDP, who are not even remotely

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April 22, 2019 1 Comment

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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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