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Category: Students

Visible Minority Numbers Rise Sharply

I was poking around some data from the Canadian Undergraduate Survey Consortium the other day and I found some utterly mind-blowing data.  Take a look at these statistics on the percentage of first-year students self-identifying as a “visible minority” on the Consortium’s triennial Survey of First Year Students: Figure 1: Self-Identified Visible Minority Students as a Percentage of Entering Class, 2001-2013               Crazy, right?  Must be all those international students flooding in. Er, no.  Well,

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September 15, 2015 4 Comments

Truth and Reconciliation

Earlier this month, Justice Murray Sinclair released the final report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC).  There are some elements of it that make for interesting reading from a post-secondary perspective. (To international readers: for a period of roughly a century, the Government of Canada provided education to First Nations Students through a series of “residential schools”, which were mostly run by one of the main churches.  These places were horrific; over that century, or so, tens of thousands

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June 18, 2015 4 Comments

STEM and STEAM: The “Two Cultures” and Academic Incentives

About a month ago, I wrote about whether institutions would adjust their program mix if it would help improve economic growth.  Nearly everyone that wrote me implicitly assumed that the “right” mix for economic growth implied a switch to a more STEM-heavy system, before going on to say something like “but what about the humanities?”  I found this kind of amusing, because I actually don’t automatically assume that STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) degrees are where it’s at in

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June 9, 2015 6 Comments

Quebec’s Student Strikes: Does History Repeat?

So, many of Quebec’s student unions are on strike again (if you’re interested in a running total, check out this site).  Only this time it’s not about tuition or even (mostly) about university funding – it’s about “austerity”.  If I were the government, I would welcome this, because it’s likely to end in defeat for the radicals. Let’s dial the clock back to 1986. Back then, there were two big pan-Quebec student organizations: the Rassemblement des associations étudiants Universitares (RAEU),

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March 31, 2015 1 Comment

Maritime Problems

A couple of weeks ago, Leo Charbonneau over at University Affairs wrote a nice little piece on Maritime universities and the trouble they’re having.  The basic message is that universities out there aren’t doomed – part of the “Don’t Panic” line that AUCC seems to be putting out these days.  The argument was essentially: hey, just nudge the participation rate a point or two, and improve retention a little bit, and those plucky little eastern universities will do just fine. Allow

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March 10, 2015 2 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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