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Category: Universities

Ever-bleaker Graduate Employment Data?

So just before I quit blogging in December, the Council of Ontario Universities released its annual survey of graduate outcomes, this time of the class of 2013.  The release contained the usual platitudes: “future is bright”, “vast majority getting well-paying jobs”, etc etc.   And I suppose if one looks at a single year’s results in isolation, one can make that case.  But a look at longer-term trends suggests cause for concern. These surveys began at the behest of the provincial

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January 16, 2017 1 Comment

The Politicization of University Accounting

Back in the fall, the Canadian Alliance of University Teachers (CAUT) published an interesting little guidebook called CAUT’s Guide to Analyzing University & College Financial Statements, written by Cameron and Janet Morrill, two profs at the University of Manitoba’s Asper School of Business.  Stripped to its essentials, it purports to be a DIY guide for faculty to help hold their institutions to account over finances. Nothing wrong with that.  Learning how to read financial statements is a good thing.  The

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January 10, 2017 1 Comment

How International Tuition Fees Keep Canadian Universities Afloat

Everyone knows that international student numbers have been going up over the past decade or so. What you might not know is what kind of effect that’s having on university budgets. So, today, a few brief tables and charts. First, tuition fees for international undergraduate students. Nationally, these have been growing at a rate of inflation +4% over the past decade, which is substantially faster than the rise in domestic tuition (roughly, inflation +1.5%). Nationally, the average international tuition is

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December 12, 2016 4 Comments

Faculty Salary Data

We haven’t looked at Faculty salary data in awhile.  Time for a gander. Let’s compare data from the years 2009-2010 and 2014-15: a nice round five years.  The data for 2009-2010 is from the old Statistics Canada UCASS survey, discontinued but recently revived; the 2014-14 data is from the National Faculty Data Pool, an organization set up by Canadian Universities to keep the UCASS going after it was defunded.  I have restricted the sample to the 38 institutions which appear

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November 29, 2016 3 Comments

Canadian Enrollment Data, 2014-15

Statistics Canada published the 2014-15 enrollment data last week and I thought I would give you a bit of an overview.  The data is based on snapshots of enrollment taken in the fall, so we’re talking a 24-month lag here (most other OECD countries can do this in 12-18 months), but this is Statscan so just be glad you’re getting any data at all. The headline news is that enrollment in 2014-15 was up – barely – from 2.048 million

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November 28, 2016 3 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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