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Category: Students

Clearer Thinking About Student Unions

Student associations have difficulty being effective, what with leadership turnovers over every year or so, and corporate memories that rarely extend beyond 36 months.  But every once in awhile, either because of some astute hires, or a lucky co-incidence of good leaders being elected at the same time, a student group gets on a hot streak.  StudentsNS, which represents the majority of associations in Nova Scotia, is in that zone right now. The latest evidence: their recent review of governance

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February 27, 2015 No Comments

Data on Textbook Costs

This data is a little old (2012), but it’s interesting, so my colleague Jacqueline Lambert and I thought we’d share it with you.  Back then, when HESA was running a student panel, we asked about 1350 university students across Canada about how much they spent on textbooks, coursepacks, and supplies for their fall semester.  Here’s what we found: Figure 1: Distribution of Expenditures on Textbooks (Fall Semester 2012)               Nearly 85% of students reported spending on textbooks. 

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February 26, 2015 4 Comments

It’s Not Just Demographics

The Council of Ontario Universities (COU) released an amusingly defensive press release last month, just after the high school applications deadline.  After a glancing acknowledgment that applications to university are down in the province for the second year in a row, we are earnestly told: DEMOGRAPHICS!  APPLICATIONS WAY UP IF YOU USE 2000 AS A BASE YEAR!  JOBS!  DEMOGRAPHICS!  MORE JOBS!  DID WE MENTION DEMOGRAPHICS? I guess COU views itself as a prophylactic against negative press coverage that secondary school applicants

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February 5, 2015 5 Comments

Sleepwalking Towards Massively Increased Participation Rates

I was in Berlin last week giving a keynote at the 20th Anniversary conference of the CHE (Centre for Higher Education Policy).  The topic was – promise not to laugh – “What Germany can Learn From Canada”. You said you wouldn’t laugh.  Last time I trust you lot. Anyways, the speech basically revolved around the following graph, which shows Canada’s impressive increase in university participation rates:  Figure 1: 18-21 University Participation Rates, Canada, 1992-2014               So, what

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December 9, 2014 5 Comments

The Arts Problem(s)

There’s no polite way to say this: Canadian universities have an Arts problem. At the heart of institutions’ looming fiscal problems is their inability to convince major customer groups (government, students) to pay the desired price for the product they’re offering.  The reason for this, mainly, is the perception that the product on offer is not value-for-money.  Part of this is due to our ludicrously opaque student aid systems, which lead students and families and politicians into thinking that net

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November 24, 2014 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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