Category: Government

Saskatchewan in a Nutshell

We have almost come to the end of the nutshell series.  In this, the final installment, we will look at Saskatchewan, which when you think of it is kind of to the other provinces what Canada is to the rest of the world.  The quintessence of Canada, if you will. Taking Saskatchewan last is partly a function of data problems in the province.  As in several other provinces, college numbers are subject to a sudden surge in the late aughts,

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Relative Effort

People often want to compare jurisdictional efforts with respect to postsecondary education investments.   These are typically exercises in choosing denominators: the numerator (total spending) is constant, it’s just a question of how to normalize raw expenditures.  In Canada, we tend to normalize expenditures in one of two ways: either in per student terms, or in terms of gross domestic product.  Figures 1 and 2 show these two measures across Canada.  In short, Newfoundland and Labrador and Saskatchewan look the best

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The State of Post-Secondary Education in Canada, 2022

Good morning.  Today marks the launch of the fifth edition of The State of Post-Secondary Education in Canada (SPEC).  You can download it here.  It’s a bit different from previous editions: it includes a new section on research in Canada, as well as a new Appendix containing a set of information-sheets for each province (patterned on the “nutshell” series which y’all seemed to have enjoyed).  And I am sure it also includes a whole new batch of mistakes, too, which

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Prince Edward Island in a Nutshell

Faithful readers will probably recall the “nutshell” series we produced last year (see here if you want to refresh your memory), in which we profiled 8 provinces’ post-secondary education systems before running out of time towards the end of the year, thereby disappointing some readers in Prince Edward Island and Saskatchewan.  However, fear not!  We’re going to finish up this month, starting out east with the Island. To begin with student numbers: Prince Edward Island is the only province in

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US Debt Cancellation – What Just Happened?

So, the big news last week in world higher education was the Biden administration finally cancelling some student debt and – in theory, who knows? – resuming student loan repayments in December of this year (they were suspended in the Spring of 2020 in the chaos of early COVID.) Let’s break down Wednesday’s announcement. The government forgave the following debt: Up to $20,000 of Department of Education debt for borrowers who apply and meet the following three criteria: have outstanding

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