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Category: Data

PIAAC: The Results for Aboriginal and Immigrant Canadians

One of the unbelievably cool things about this week’s PIAAC release is the degree to which StatsCan and CMEC have gone the extra mile to not only oversample for every province, but also for every territory (a first, to my knowledge), and for Aboriginal populations, as well – although they were not able to include on-reserve populations in their sample.  This allows us to take some truly interesting looks at several vulnerable sub-segments of the population. Let’s start with the Aboriginal population. 

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October 11, 2013 3 Comments

More PIAAC: The Canadian Story

Yesterday I offered my thoughts on some of the highlights from the international portion of the PIAAC release; today I want to focus on the Canadian results. Figure 1 shows the overall literacy scores, by province. Figure 1: Literacy Scores by Province, PIAAC               At first glance, PIAAC doesn’t seem to be telling us anything we didn’t already know from years of PISA & TIMSS surveys.  Alberta comes first, the Atlantic is mostly a mess,

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October 10, 2013 8 Comments

A New Study on Postdocs

There’s an interesting study on postdocs out today, from the Canadian Association of Postdoctoral Scholars (CAPS) and MITACS.  The report provides a wealth of data on postdocs’ demographics, financial status, likes, dislikes, etc.  It’s all thoroughly interesting and well worth a read, but I’m going to restrict my comments to just two of the most interesting results. The first has to do, specifically, with postdocs’ legal status.  In Quebec, they are considered students. Outside Quebec, it depends: if their funding comes

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October 2, 2013 No Comments

How the Zero-Tuition Crew Could Learn to Love Tax Credits

So, let’s say you’re among those who clings to the idea that tuition isn’t just a massive give-away to upper-income families.  Let’s say you really, really believe that tuition – sticker-price tuition, none of these “net price calculations”, thank you very much – affects access.  How would you go about gathering evidence for your point of view? Ideally, of course, there would be some data showing that, as fees went up, participation went down.  Problem is, the data doesn’t show

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October 1, 2013 1 Comment

Cultural Determinants of Data Acquisition Costs

I saw a fascinating piece in the New York Times awhile back.  It was about a trend at American universities, asking applicants if they were gay or not.  Apparently, these institutions believe that by asking students this question, they are sending a message that they are a gay-positive environment. Interesting. Americans think that transparency about identity is the path to utopia.  Enrolment statistics by race?  They’ve got them.  Indeed, they are required to keep such statistics, because of a clutch of laws

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September 19, 2013 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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