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Category: Data

HEQCO’s Intriguing Skills Report

HEQCO produced a fascinating report on skills last week, which I want to explore in depth.  Unfortunately, it has put a few people’s backs up because of a couple of poorly-chosen sentences in a covering press release, which I will also explore.  But let’s focus on the first bit, because simply putting this study took an enormous amount of effort that needs to be acknowledged and celebrated. (Actually, they released two intriguing reports: one on literacy and numeracy and one on critical thinking. 

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December 4, 2018 1 Comment

Measuring Social Mobility in Higher Education

It is a universally acknowledged truth that while nearly every higher education policy maker in the world is required to discuss The Imperative of Accessibility, almost no one defines or measures it.  Because God forbid access policies, especially Canadian policies, be informed by evidence. It’s not like it’s impossible to do.  In the UK, the University and College Application Service simply analyses the postal codes of applicants and students and use that to track changes over time.  Are student entry rates

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November 28, 2018 1 Comment

The Balance of Federal-Provincial Expenditures

Today, I am going to try to pull all this data together to see to what extent federal and provincial shares of expenditure in PSE have changed over time. As far as institutional expenditures go, the presence of federal indirect transfers complicates a good historical look at the question.  Up until 1976, it’s possible to look directly at cash and tax transfers specifically designated for PSE, and it is possible again after 2007-08 when the Harper Government carved out a

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November 9, 2018 No Comments

Comparing Provincial Expenditures on Post-Secondary Education

Answering the question of which provincial government spends the most on post-secondary education is trickier than it looks.  Not only do provinces differ in size (Ontario is roughly 95 times the size of Prince Edward Island), but they differ in terms of post-secondary participation rates, they differ in terms of the types of institutions they fund, and of course they differ in wealth and fiscal capacity.  So how can one sensibly compare these things? (For those of you with sharp

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October 24, 2018 2 Comments

Bad Coverage

A clutch of recent media stories about higher education are kind of irritating me.  Specifically, it’s the media credulity on display which is so disheartening. One major source of irritation has to do with stories which get written when a professor is suspended or dismissed. We’ve had two of these recently, one in Nova Scotia and one in BC. The one in Nova Scotia concerned Psychology professor (what the hell is it with Canadian psychology profs, anyway?)  Rick Mehta, who

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October 4, 2018 No Comments

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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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