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Category: Data

How to Read a Poll

You may have seen the results of a poll out last week from Abacus Canada for Universities Canada, one which purports to look at “how Canadians feel about universities”.  I suspect you will hear a lot of this poll over the next few months, especially with respect to research and the Naylor report.  But it’s always worth approaching these things with a skeptical eye, so let’s spend a little time looking at the poll and how the questions were put together to

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September 25, 2017 1 Comment

Why our Science Minister is Going to be Disappointed in Statscan

Last week Statscan sent me a consultation form asking my opinions about their ideas on how to change UCASS (the University and College Academic Staff Survey, which like most Statscan products containing the word “college” does not actually include the institutions most of us call “colleges” i.e. community colleges).  I’ve already said something about this effort back here to the effect that focussing so much effort on data collection re: part-time staff is a waste of time, but the consultation guide makes

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September 15, 2017 No Comments

Notes on the Finances of China’s Top Universities

One of my distractions over the past summer has been to learn more about Chinese universities.  And, fortunately, this is becoming a lot easier as Chinese universities are starting to put more of their data online.  Today, I just want to take you through a bit of a tour of China’s top universities (roughly the equivalent of the US Ivy League), which are known as the “C9”, most of which now put their financial data online. So let’s start just

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September 14, 2017 No Comments

Some Curious Data From OECD Education at a Glance 2017

The OECD put out its annual Education at a Glance  publication yesterday.  No huge surprises except for the fact that they appear to have killed one of the most-used tables in the whole book (A.1.2, which compared tertiary attainment rates for 25-34 year olds by type of tertiary program – i.e. college v. university) which is an enormous bummer.  The finance data says what it pretty much always says: Canada is the #2 spender overall on higher education at 2.6% of GDP

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September 13, 2017 No Comments

The Growing Importance of Fee Income

I made a little remark last week to the effect that on present trends, student fees would pass provincial funding as a source of revenue for universities by 2020-2021 and combined fed-prov government funding by 2025.  Based on my twitter feed, that seems to have got people quite excited.  But I should have been a little clearer about what I was saying. First of all, by “on present trends”, I literally meant do the simple/stupid thing and take the annual change from

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September 11, 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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