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Category: Students

Antipodean Student Organization Struggles

With the Ford government being the first to take aim at compulsory student unionism in Canada (he will not be the last; in Alberta, Jason Kenney’s UCP has a similar policy resolution on its books), it is worth taking a more detailed look at how the move to make fees optional has played out elsewhere.  Specifically, Down Under, where these policy ideas were first put into practice in the under the name “Voluntary Student Unionism” (VSU, in Australia) and “Voluntary

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January 23, 2019 No Comments

Millennial Complaints (Part 1)

Unless you’ve been under a rock the last decade or so, you will be familiar with the line of argument that millennials are a uniquely put-upon (or, in the vernacular, “screwed”) generation.  They are over-educated, over-indebted, condemned to never get on the success ladder, etc…you know the story. The question is: how true is it? The answer is: it depends in large part on which millennials we are talking about and to whom you want to compare them. Let’s start

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January 17, 2019 1 Comment

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

HEQCO’s Intriguing Skills Report

HEQCO produced a fascinating report on skills last week, which I want to explore in depth.  Unfortunately, it has put a few people’s backs up because of a couple of poorly-chosen sentences in a covering press release, which I will also explore.  But let’s focus on the first bit, because simply putting this study took an enormous amount of effort that needs to be acknowledged and celebrated. (Actually, they released two intriguing reports: one on literacy and numeracy and one on critical thinking. 

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December 4, 2018 1 Comment

Notes on Canada’s International Advantages (and Disadvantages)

During my brief trip to Asia, I spent a fair bit of time chatting with people who one way or another are in the international education business.  Two somewhat connected thoughts: Canadians Continue to be Not Very Good at the Whole International Campus Thing.   I spent a couple of days in Dubai, where there are now somewhere on the order of 100-odd institutions operating, a substantial portion of which are international.  The only “semi”- Canadian one is an outfit called

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November 14, 2018 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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