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Category: Institutions

History of Canadian PSE Part II (to 1940)

If you look at the history of Canadian post-secondary education, there are two particularly notable things going on with respect to the first four decades of the twentieth century.  The first is that western Canada got universities.  And the second is that Eastern universities entered into contracts with the state. East of Winnipeg, very few new universities were created in this period.  Newfoundland (not yet part of Canada) created Memorial University after WWI, and Mount Saint Vincent and Saint Thomas

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September 21, 2018 3 Comments

Canada’s Three Types of Colleges

If you’re in the business of trying to describe Canadian higher education, one of the hardest things to do is to try to explain Canada’s community college sector, since the institutions that comprise it vary substantially from one province to another. If one takes a historical approach, then there are, broadly speaking, three types of colleges in Canada.  There are Quebec’s CEGEPs, which are sui generis both in Canada and internationally.  Technically creatures of the 1960s, their roots go back over a

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September 17, 2018 2 Comments

Comparing College and University Funding

[the_ad id=”11745″] While I was putting together The State of Post-Secondary Education, 2018 I did a simple comparison looking at provincial government funding for universities and colleges, using data from FIUC and FINCOL (the Statscan surveys of the finances of universities and colleges, respectively)  Here’s what I found: Figure 1: Provincial Government Funding per Full-time Equivalent Student, 2015-16 I had a hard time believing this relatively small gap was actually true: everybody knows universities get more money from governments than colleges, right? But I

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September 13, 2018 1 Comment

History of Canadian PSE Part I (to 1900)

I decided over the summer to try to write an outline sketch of Canadian Higher Education for y’all.  Expect installments periodically. SNAPSHOT: In 1900, Canadian universities together enrolled 6,641 students.  89% were male, 11% female.  44% of students were in the Arts and Science, while 27% were in medicine, and 11% were in Engineering. *** The key to understanding Canada’s somewhat chaotic higher education system lies in understanding two key phenomena: sectarianism and federalism.  The former issue historically dominated Canadian higher education and gave

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September 7, 2018 1 Comment

Bad Data on Sessionals

The Canadian Association of University Teachers (CAUT) put out a paper on Tuesday entitled Out of the Shadows: Experiences of Contract Academic Staff, which mostly presents data on a survey conducted by the association last year.  While the intentions might have been good, the resulting data – which is already getting lots of media play – needs to be taken with a grain of salt.  And one claim in particular – that the number of sessional faculty has soared by 79% in the

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September 6, 2018 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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