Category: Data

Education at a Glance 2025, Part 1

The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) released its annual stat fest, Education at a Glance (EAG), two weeks ago and I completely forgot about it. But since not a single Canadian news outlet wrote anything about it (neither it nor the Council of Ministers of Education, Canada saw fit to put together a “Canada” briefing, apparently), this blog – two weeks later than usual – is still technically a scoop. Next week, I will review some new data

Read More »

The State of Postsecondary Education in Canada, 2025

Hi all. Today, HESA is releasing the eighth edition of The State of Postsecondary Education in Canada, co-authored by myself and HESA’s Jiwoo Jeon and Janet Balfour. Many thanks to our partners – Pearson, Studiosity, Duolingo, Capio, Element451 and Riipen – for supporting this year’s edition. You probably don’t need to actually read this year’s edition to know that the state of postsecondary education in Canada is a bit perilous. And the reason for this, quite simply, is that public

Read More »

Data Flourishing for Universities and Colleges (Governance Edition)

Yesterday, we wrote about how to make institutions flourish through better use of data…for management. But just as important as management is governance, and here, we would argue, a very different set of issues is at play. Let’s start at the top, with Boards of Governors. As Alex has previously argued, Board members are fundamentally part-timers. They spend maybe 5-8 days worth of time a year doing their Boardly duties. They need to be kept focused. Giving Board members reams

Read More »

Data Flourishing for Universities and Colleges (Management Edition)

Hi all. I’m writing jointly today with colleagues Andrew Drinkwater and Pat Lougheed from Plaid Analytics, a company with whom HESA is teaming up to offer services related to improving the state of data collection, analysis, and use on campuses across the country. We’re not going to spend time giving you an outline of what we’re offering (although do click here for more if this interests you), but we do want to talk about how we see data environments evolving

Read More »

Overskilled and Underused? What PIAAC Reveals About the Canadian Workforce

Before our show starts today, I just wanna take a minute to note the passing of Professor Claire Callender, OBE. For the last two and a half decades, she’s been one of the most important figures in UK higher education studies, in particular with respect to student loans and student finance. Holder of a joint professorship at UCL Institute of Education and Birkbeck University of London, she was also instrumental in setting up the ESRC Centre for Global Higher Education,

Read More »