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Category: Data

“Eating the Future” in Action

Y’all probably remember me talking about how Canada is eating the future by spending tons of money on consumption but not enough on real investments that pay dividends down the line. Today, I want to show you a prime example of that, and this: spending on the elderly. In every budget there is a line-item called “Elderly benefits” which includes Old Age Security (the non-contributory pension everyone over 65 gets) and the Guaranteed income Supplement (the means-tested income boost for

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November 13, 2024 4 Comments

Estimating Employment in the Higher Education Sector

For many years, I have been making the point that Canada has very little good data on employment in the higher education sector. We have a national annual tally, based on administrative data, of ranked academic faculty in universities from a system called UCASS, or the University and College Academic Staff Survey (don’t let the title fool you, it’s really only universities). Beyond that—data on non-academic staff, or any national data at all on colleges—is basically bupkis. Except, that’s not

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October 9, 2024 1 Comment

How to (and not to) Talk about Returns on Investment

Late this summer I came across a report from Polytechnics Canada, claiming to be a statement of Economic Impact of Polytechnics across the country. I have rarely read a document that left me with such profoundly mixed feelings, because it exemplified the absolute best and worst of the genre. Long-time readers will know that I have a deep interest in the subject of institutional Economic Impact statements. Five years ago I wrote this piece explaining why I thought the standard practice of

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October 1, 2024 No Comments

The Eighth Wonder of the World: Ontario College Finances to 2023-24

Over the summer some of the HESA team went through the financial statements of the 24 Ontario Community Colleges for both 2022-2023 and 2023-24 statements. It’s…well, pretty wild. Ontario colleges were going after international students pretty heavily before COVID. But in the two years since the pandemic mostly subsided, the numbers are crazy. We don’t know exactly how crazy because the Government of Ontario, in an amazing show of either incompetence or gutlessness, is now five months late in releasing

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September 18, 2024 6 Comments

A Sub-par Study on Returns to Education

Last Week, Royal Bank produced a study with the brash headline “Financial Returns After a Post-Secondary Education Have Diminished.” Within the limited terms of the limited methodology of the first half of the mini-paper, the headline is not entirely incorrect. But man, this is a disappointing piece of analysis from an organization with pretensions to thought leadership. So, what does this paper say? Basically, part 1 of the paper takes four data points for university (NOT all of post-secondary—strike one

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September 17, 2024 1 Comment
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One Thought to Start Your Day

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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