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Category: Colleges and Polytechnics

Stacking and Micro-credentials

Just a short one today, on micro-credentials. In theory, micro-credentials can serve one of two purposes.  One is that they can be used as bespoke workforce-oriented training to fill very specific/niche labour market ends; the other is that they can be used – like credits – to stack towards large credentials such as diplomas, master’s degrees, and others.  If you draw up the policy framework for micro-credentials in the right way, they can achieve either or both of these goals

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November 16, 2022 3 Comments

That Fifth Estate Episode

Many of you will have seen the Fifth Estate episode that aired two weeks ago, about international students in Canadian institutions and how many of them think – sometimes not without reason – they have been sold a bill of goods with respect to the quality of the education they receive.  If you haven’t already watched it, it’s here and you may want to give it a gander before continuing with this blog. Finished?  Good.  Then I’ll begin. Broadly speaking,

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October 26, 2022 4 Comments

The Global Collapse in “College” Enrolments

One thing that’s been quite clear for awhile is that the Canadian community college sector has been seeing a decline in domestic enrolments for the better part of a decade.  Peak domestic community college enrolment was in 2012-13: by 2020-21 numbers were already down by over 10% and my understanding from chatting with people across the country is that domestic numbers have continued to decline in the past two years, quite substantially in some cases.  Obviously, many colleges have found

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October 12, 2022 8 Comments

Ontario Colleges (Yes, Again)

If you want a peek into how I spent my days, come, join with me on a quest to try to get Canadian institutional data in less than 3 years.  It’ll be fun, I promise.  It’s about Ontario Colleges, which are never not interesting. Let me show you two graphs which take us right up to the point where our national statistics agency’s data leaves off, 2019-20 (yes, really).  The first is international students as a percentage of Ontario’s total

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September 12, 2022 2 Comments

Tennessee’s Free Tuition Experiment Reconsidered

Long time readers may remember about six years ago I examined a program known as the Tennessee Promise, one of the earlier “free tuition” programs in the US.  Technically, it was not a “free tuition” scheme, but rather what was known as a “last dollar scholarship”, meaning that after applying all other scholarships or need-based aid, the state brings the “net tuition” to zero.  What I found was that if you looked just at students coming out of secondary school

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April 20, 2022 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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