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Category: Colleges and Polytechnics

Canada: Not Quite as Good as It Looks in OECD Comparisons

On Monday, Statscan put out a “Portrait of Youth and Education in Canada,” which includes the following graph accompanied by a note to the effect that Canada has one of the highest post-secondary attainment rates in the world because of our high community colleges/polytechnic participation rates. It was accompanied by the following graph: Figure 1: Highest Level of Educational Attainment, 25 to 34-year-olds, Canada and OECD average 2019, as per Statistics Canada Now, I know this line of argument. I

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October 7, 2021 2 Comments

Nova Scotia Manifesto Analysis (Summer Edition)

Morning all.  Hope you are having a good summer.  Just returning briefly to the blog because Nova Scotia goes to the polls today, and in the ancient, decade-long tradition of this blog (ten years ago last week, the blog debuted with this piece to a beta audience of about 100) I gotta do a manifesto analysis.  So, here goes. The NDP manifesto commitments on PSE are disappointingly thin.  The entirety of their platform is i) “(work) towards eliminating tuition fees, beginning with tuition fees

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August 17, 2021 No Comments

The Miracle of Ontario College Funding

Let me tell you a sad story about Ontario colleges.   In 2018-19, Ontario colleges got a huge influx of extra public money, about $120 million or so, or a bump of about 7%. I’m not exactly sure why – suspect a lot of it was money pushed out the door in the waning months of the Wynne administration.  But then times changed.  In 2019-20, government transfers to Ontario colleges fell by 10%.  And on top of that, the government slashed

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January 18, 2021 2 Comments

New Enrolment Data. 2017-18. Finally.

Morning all.  There is finally enrolment data from October 2017 for the 2017-18 year.  Praise be StatsCan.  (Some of you think I am a bit hard on the people from Tunney’s Pasture.  Let’s be clear: much of the reason it takes StatsCan so long to put data together is because it takes institutions – particularly community colleges – a long time to compile and submit the data.  My understanding is that part of the reason this year’s release is a couple of years late

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February 20, 2020 No Comments

Where the Living is Easy

Before Christmas, I made a bit of a fuss about the six Ontario Colleges who had made deals with private career colleges in the GTA to teach international students.  The previous provincial government had decided to shut these agreements down because they seemed to pose systemic reputation risks to Ontario colleges, but the new one decided not only to leave them alone but to allow those colleges to double down on them, ostensibly on the grounds that they all really, really

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January 14, 2020 2 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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