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Category: Data

Those OECD Attainment Numbers

The OECD’s annual Education at a Glance publication was released on Tuesday.  There weren’t a whole lot of shockers in there, but one thing that always sets Canadians crowing is the table that looks at tertiary educational attainment because, at first glance, we seem to do really well on that measure.  To wit: Figure 1: Tertiary Attainment Rates, 25-64 Year Olds, Canada, OECD Average and Select OECD Countries, 2012               Yay Canada!  We’re number one! Well, hang

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September 11, 2014 7 Comments

How StatsCan Measures Changes in Tuition

Every September, Statistics Canada publishes data on “average tuition fees”. It’s a standard date on the back-to-school media calendar, where everyone gets to freak out about the cost of education.  And we all take it for granted that the data StatsCan publishes is “true”.  But there are some… subtleties… to the data that are worth pointing out. Statistics Canada collects data on tuition from individual institutions through a survey called the Tuition and Living Accommodation Survey (TLAC).  For each field

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September 10, 2014 2 Comments

More Graduate Labour Market Data

Yesterday I showed that recent Ontario university graduates’ incomes are taking a beating, notably in Arts and Sciences.  I’m sure this led to a fair bit of crowing among those who claim we have too many students in university, and they all oughta go to college instead because skills, new economy, yadda yadda. The problem with that argument is that college grads are getting creamed in the labour market, too. Now, we can’t compare university and college outcomes in terms of

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September 9, 2014 1 Comment

Some Scary Graduate Income Numbers

Last week, the Council of Ontario Universities put out a media release with the headline “Ontario University Graduates are Getting Jobs”, and trumpeted the results of the annual provincial graduates survey, which showed that 93% of undergraduates had jobs two years after graduation, and their income was $49,398.  Hooray! But the problem – apart from the fact that it’s not actually 93% of all graduates with jobs, but rather 93% of all graduates who are in the labour market (i.e.

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September 8, 2014 1 Comment

Valuing Foreign Degrees

There was an interesting Statscan paper out yesterday that made some fascinating observations about education, immigration, and human capital.  With the totally hip title, The Human Capital Model of Selection and the Economic Outcomes of Immigrants (authors: Picot, Hou and Qiu), it’s a good example both of what Statscan-type analyses do well, and do poorly. At one level, it’s a very good study.  It uses the Longitudinal Administrative Databank (Statscan’s coolest database – it’s a longitudinal 20% sample of all of the

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May 30, 2014 3 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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