Category: Canada

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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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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Fun with Ontario Application Data

Every year or two, it’s fun to play with Ontario applications data (it would be fun to play with applications data from the rest of the country, too, but Ontario is the only place that actually aggregates it, so hold your hot-takes on upper-Canada-centricness).  And, it turns out, there are a lot of quite interesting stories. Let’s start with the programs of study.  The Ontario University Applications Centre modified its program categories a couple of years ago, so to look

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The Bombshell in the Ontario Budget

Morning all.  Yesterday at Queen’s Park, Finance Minister Vic Fedeli brought in the Ontario Conservatives’ first budget of their new mandate.   There were cuts of various sorts, particularly in social services, but in many ways it was gentler than people expected: the plan involves getting the budget to balance in five years, which frankly is what the Liberals probably would have done anyway (though they wouldn’t have got there exclusively by reducing the spend side).  It’s not even a strict

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If Canada Were Serious About Higher Education (Part 4)

When it comes to higher education, one of the most salient facts about Canada is that we are a federation in which both levels of governments play important roles.  Yet, to put it mildly, we are not very good at co-ordinating those roles.  Indeed, some might say we are uniquely bad at it.  If we were serious about higher education, we wouldn’t be. The main problem has to do with Science and how it is funded. The bulk of our scientific

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