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Category: Colleges and Polytechnics

College Finance Data 2017-18

Morning.  Just after the blog closed for the holidays, Statistics Canada did its annual release of data from the FINCOL survey (that’s the one that asks colleges about their income and expenditure, just like FIUC does for universities, only in a lot less detail).  So, as usual, I thought I would give you a look into the data. Let’s start with the big picture.  Nationally, revenue at colleges increased by 2.8% after inflation, which is pretty good.  It’s not quite the 7%

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January 9, 2020 No Comments

Ontario Doubles Down on Dodgy Colleges

Remember about a month ago when I noted how several Ontario colleges now had international student numbers above 50% of total enrolment?  And about how in some cases this was being done by small town colleges establishing “partnerships” with private vocational colleges in the Greater Toronto Area?  How they were effectively warehousing international students at these locations, charging them full tuition, and paying the private college to teach some allegedly bespoke curriculum while pocketing the difference? Two pieces of news.

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November 18, 2019 2 Comments

Statscan on College Degrees and International Students

What with all the excitement over back-to-school and the federal election, I have been a bit remiss in keeping up with news from Statistics Canada.  Which is unfortunate, because One Thought’s favourite Stastcan analyst, Marc Frenette, had two papers out in September. They are well worth a quick look. The first paper, Obtaining a Bachelor’s Degree from a Community College: Earnings Outlook and Prospects for Graduates, was released on September 9th.  In the five provinces west of Quebec, it has been the

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October 15, 2019 No Comments

Ontario Colleges: International students up, Aboriginal students down

Lost in all the back-to-school period excitement was the release of Ontario college enrollment data for 2018-19. The recency of this Ontario data is fantastic, especially given that Statscan is two full years behind (the best data available on students nationally right now is 2016-17, because Ottawa fundamentally does not care about student data).  These are well worth a look because there are some wild things in there, especially if we look at students by “source,” which is a weird mixture

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October 3, 2019 No Comments

College Finance Data, 2016-17

A few months ago, I promised you all an update on college finances when Statscan finally got around to updating its FINCOL tables.  Well, that day is here. Unlike universities, which have seen their budgets grow in real terms by about 25% over the last decade, growth in college budgets has been a lot slower – only about 14% – and nearly all that growth has come from student fees, since government support has been essentially flat.  In total, college

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January 14, 2019 No 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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