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Category: Worldwide PSE

Using PIAAC to Measure Value-Added in Higher Ed: US Good, Australia Abysmal

A few weeks ago, when commenting on the PIAAC release, I noted that one could use the results to come up with a very rough-and-ready measure of “value added” in higher education.  PIAAC contains two relevant pieces of data for this: national mean literacy scores for students aged 16-19 completing upper-secondary education, and national mean literacy scores for students aged 16-29 who have completed Tertiary A.  Simply by subtracting the former from the latter, one arrives at a measure of

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November 13, 2013 6 Comments

Kevin Lynch is Horribly Wrong

It’s disappointing that Kevin Lynch, former head of the public service in Ottawa, is the latest victim of that peculiarly Canadian disease, where one’s casual knowledge of the German apprenticeship system leads one to lose all critical faculties – as demonstrated in this awful article from the weekend Globe. The article starts by noting that, “in proficiency in numeracy and literacy among 16-24 year-olds…, Canada is lagging the results for the Nordic countries, Australia and Germany”.  Wrong.  Well, at least partly wrong.

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November 11, 2013 3 Comments

Better Know a Higher Ed System: Qatar

Until about fifteen years ago, Qatar was a pretty typical Gulf country as far as higher education was concerned. With a single state university, founded and staffed mostly by Egyptians, it satisfied the needs of the small domestic population.  But then the country decided to get serious about higher education. With help from the RAND corporation, the ruling al-Thani family’s Qatar Foundation established something called Education City, an absolutely unique experiment in cross-border education.  Lots of institutions have set up

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November 8, 2013 5 Comments

Better Know a Higher Ed System: the East African Community

Yeah, I know: Africa’s not a country. But in higher education, at least, Kenya, Tanzania, and Uganda are similar enough that they can be described as a single unit. The story starts with Makerere University in Kampala, which was founded in 1922.  It’s the mothership for the whole region – both the University of Dar Es Salaam and the University of Nairobi (the Tanzanian and Kenyan flagships) started as its branch campuses back in the 1960s, when it was known

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November 1, 2013 No Comments

The Cultural Determinants of Student Debt Policy

With the school year now back in full swing, one of the things you’ve undoubtedly heard, and will continue to hear, is the question of student debt, and how it has become “out of control”.  And in that spirit, I wanted to relay a little anecdote. A few months ago, as part of a student loans-related project that I was working on in a Southeast-Asian country, I led a session for government and bank officials looking at possible loan parameters,

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October 30, 2013 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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