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Category: Worldwide PSE

OECD data says still no underfunding

The OECD’s annual datapalooza-tastic publication Education at a Glance was released yesterday.  The pdf is available for free here.  Let me take you through a couple of the highlights around Higher Education. For the following comparisons, I show Canada against the rest of the G7 (minus Italy because honestly, economically, who cares?), plus Australia because it’s practically our twin, Korea because it’s cool, Sweden because someone always asks about Scandinavia and the OECD average because hey that just makes sense. 

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September 16, 2016 No Comments

Measuring the Effects of Study Abroad

In the higher education advocacy business, an unhappily large proportion of the research used is of the correlation = causation type.  For instance, many claim that higher education has lots of social benefits like lower crime rates and higher rates of community volunteering on the grounds that outcomes of graduates are better than outcomes of non-graduates in these areas.  But this is shaky.  There are very few studies which look at this carefully enough to eliminate selection bias – that

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September 13, 2016 1 Comment

Some Intriguing New UK Access Data

The UK’s Higher Education Statistics Agency (also known in these parts as “the other HESA”) put out an interesting report recently on participation in higher education in England (available here).  England is of course of great interest to access researchers everywhere because its massive tuition hike in 2012 is a major natural policy experiment: if there is no clear evidence of changes in access after a tuition hike of that magnitude then we can be more confident that tuition hikes

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September 9, 2016 No Comments

A tipping point for internationalization?

Over the last few years, my position about internationalization has been pretty consistent: the international student market is going to grow and grow.  Talk about a China bubble – one of the education press’s favourite “what-if?” doom and gloom scenarios – is almost invariably overstated.  Yes, political instability in a place might China might occur, but Chinese parents think of having students overseas as an insurance policy, a way to get out if need be – so frankly if anything

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August 3, 2016 1 Comment

Brexit

Morning, all. Everyone’s writing a Brexit thinkpiece these days.  Literally, everyone.  I’m feeling left out.  So here’s mine. 1) Brexit isn’t a foregone conclusion.  Yes, Leave won 52% of a non-binding referendum based on a pack of lies about the results of future negotiations that would make the PQ blush.  But the UK government has yet to invoke Article 50, the clause in the EU constitution that signals a 2-year countdown to departure, and will certainly not do so until

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July 14, 2016 No 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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