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Category: PSE Outcomes

The Case Against Education

Sorry for the delay this AM, all.  Long flight over the Atlantic yesterday. There is a new book out from George Mason economics professor Bryan Caplan called The Case Against Education: Why the Education System is a Waste of Time and Money.  It’s causing some brouhaha south of the border (you may have seen this article in The Atlantic). There is a longstanding argument in economics about how to measure gains from education.  Basically, there is the “human capital” view, which says that

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February 1, 2018 1 Comment

A More Nuanced Look at Graduate Incomes

It’s all-Council-of-Ontario-Universities this week on the blog, but that’s because they’re the ones putting out the great data.  Today, it’s the annual survey on graduate outcomes which looks at how bachelor’s degree graduates are faring in the labour market.  Standard caveat: Ontario =/= Canada, but it produces nearly half the country’s bachelor degrees so it’s bound to be close to the national average and the trends you see here are unlikely to be much different that those you see anywhere else. Figure 1 shows

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January 25, 2018 No Comments

Canada’s Secret Weapon against Inequality

Inequality is perhaps the great political issue of the 21st century (so far anyway).  And while Canada isn’t exactly a world-beater on this score, we do show up a heck of a lot better than some of our peers – say in the UK, France or certainly the US.  Despite lots of great work by people like Miles Corak, there’s no real agreement as to why this is: is it more robust social programs?  A more powerful union movement?  Our immigration

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January 22, 2018 2 Comments

2016 Census Data on Education

Yesterday, Statistics Canada did the last of its big data dumps on the 2016 census and it covered education.  As usual, the HESA Towers team swung into action to get you the highlights (no, really, today was a big team effort, Jonathan W. and Robert B. did extra duty to get you this post today). Now, census data isn’t usually something that drives big headlines. You usually have plenty of notice about things like “people getting more educated than they

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November 30, 2017 No Comments

Why Companies Value(d) Higher Education

I recently read the book A Perfect Mess: the Unlikely Ascendancy of American Higher Education by David Larabee.  It’s very good – in fact, the first two chapters are for my money the best short history of pre-1900 American higher education ever written.  I’m going to refer to this book a few times over the next couple of weeks.  But today, I want to talk about an engaging little passage he penned about how business came to view college (that is, American

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October 5, 2017 1 Comment

One Thought to Start Your Day

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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