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Category: Students

Cape Breton. Yet Again.

Just a quick one today, because you all know how this story goes. The Atlantic Association of Universities, bless them, produces enrolment data every October.  Why it takes every other university in the country over a year to do the same is an utter mystery.  But whatever the reason, it gives us the earliest window into what’s going on nationally in enrolments. Here’s the skinny: Total enrolment is up 1%.  But, predictably, it’s not evenly spread across student types.  International

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November 1, 2022 No Comments

Demography is Not Destiny, But….

It is a truth universally acknowledged that, first, Canada is facing something of a demographic trough with respect to young people, and second, that this the reason domestic enrolment at the post-secondary level is slumping.  Except, no.  The first was true 10-15 years ago, and while the second might still be true, it’s about to change in a hurry.  I wrote about reversing demographic trends a couple of years ago, but everyone could use an update because change in this

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October 31, 2022 2 Comments

One Podcast to Start Your Day-SEM

Good morning.  Today is the start of an experiment here at HESA: podcasting.  Basically, the idea is to replace one blog every few weeks with a podcast and – for those of you who only want their morning higher ed intelligence in prose form – an edited highlights package in text form. For our inaugural pod, I asked York University’s Darran Fernandez (Assistant Vice Provost and University Registrar at York University), and the University of Alberta’s Melissa Padfield (Deputy Provost Students and

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October 27, 2022 3 Comments

Counting Students

Today’s blog is a nerdy one, prompted by a question from a client: “how many post-secondary students are there in Canada”?  If thinking about how Canadian governments measure the size of the student body isn’t your thing, feel free to skip today.  Let’s start by thinking about who reports student numbers.  Institutions all have a good idea of how many students they have at any given moment, basically because they need to know who has paid  (this sounds cynical, but

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October 25, 2022 No Comments

The Global Collapse in “College” Enrolments

One thing that’s been quite clear for awhile is that the Canadian community college sector has been seeing a decline in domestic enrolments for the better part of a decade.  Peak domestic community college enrolment was in 2012-13: by 2020-21 numbers were already down by over 10% and my understanding from chatting with people across the country is that domestic numbers have continued to decline in the past two years, quite substantially in some cases.  Obviously, many colleges have found

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October 12, 2022 8 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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