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Category: Data

Fun with Canadian Scientific Publications Data

You may recall that in last Friday’s blog I was looking at scientific output of world-class universities.  I could do that thanks to quite an excellent database available from Leiden University’s Centre for Science and Technology Studies, developers of the excellent multi-dimensional Leiden Rankings, which do a strong job of comparing university research output and impact. I have covered this output and impact a couple of times before back here and here.   This same data can be used to compare Canadian institutions – or at least the

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November 15, 2017 No Comments

The Canada-Is-Falling-Behind-on-Study-Abroad Fallacy

If there’s one drum Canadian universities love to beat on international education, it’s that Canada is falling way behind other countries in terms of students gaining international experience during their studies.  It’s a great story, except for one tiny thing: it’s not true.   It’s really not true. Check out, for instance, this data below, from the most recent OECD Education at a Glance, which shows the percentage of total students from each country who are enrolled abroad (Data is from Table C4.3, for

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November 2, 2017 1 Comment

New Data on Equity and Inclusion?

So, you may have read something last week (perhaps this piece from the Globe and Mail) about Universities Canada’s members all getting together to sign up for a set of Principles on Equity, Diversity and Inclusion, and an associated Action Plan on Inclusive Excellence.  There is lots of good stuff in these documents, and the promise made by Universities Canada to make public demographic data on faculty, staff and students.  But, a warning: there may be less to this than meets the eye.

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November 1, 2017 1 Comment

Bad Numbers

I like to name and shame people who are playing fast and loose with numbers.  Usually, this involves taking one “true” data point and then using it to make a point which is unwarranted by the data in context.  A couple of examples caught my eye last week. First up: “Students have at most a 1 in 4 chance that the person at the front of the classroom is a full-time faculty member”. This is the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternative’s

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October 31, 2017 9 Comments

Some Surprising (?) Data on Canadian University Expenditures

I’ve been doing some work on financial data of higher education institutions around the world, and specifically looking at what’s been going on at top research institutions compared to everyone else.  And I thought maybe you all would be interested in what I’ve found for Canada. For the purpose of this document, I have separated the six institutions in Canada which always come top in the Academic Ranking of World Universities (aka “Shanghai Rankings”) – that’s Toronto, UBC, McGill, McMaster,

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September 27, 2017 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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