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Tag: Apprenticeships

Getting Serious about Apprenticeships

As I noted back on Monday, for a variety of deeply atavistic reasons, Canadian political parties have decided that the knowledge economy is out and some kind of 1960s economy based, improbably, on the construction industry, is in. And so, similarly, postsecondary students are out along with colleges and universities, while apprentices and skilled trades are in. Which, you know, whatever. Fine. But if we are going to do this, parties need to start developing policies which will improve our

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April 30, 2025 2 Comments

Fun With Apprenticeship Registration Data

Last week we looked at undergraduate enrolment. Today, I want to look at a slightly more complicated story; namely, changes over time in apprenticeship enrolments. Figure 1 shows a well-known story about apprenticeships.  This country had a long construction boom starting just before the turn of the century driven in large part by the super-cycle in commodities prices (mainly oil and gas) through to the first half of last decade.  Then, as we all know, oil prices fell, meaning that

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September 26, 2022 No Comments

Two Quick International Student Aid Updates

From Denmark and New Zealand, we have some very interesting policy developments to review. Let’s start down south, where Jacinda Ardern’s Labour Party seems to be cruising to a massive electoral victory in next week’s election.  Labour, which came second in 2017 but grabbed the brass ring via a coalition agreement with the nationalist/populist New Zealand First party, seems to be within touching distance of a standalone majority, which is almost impossible in a proportional representation system.  I guess that’s

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October 15, 2020 No Comments

Why Does WIL Work?

A friend of mine asked me a deceptively simple question the other day: “why does Work-Integrated Learning (WIL) work”?”   What are the possible reasons that students with WIL experiences do better than others in common outcomes such as “higher starting salaries” or “faster transition to full-time work” (take your pick)?  This is a really good question because the answer is nowhere near as straightforward as you might think. One possible answer – the one that seems to be popular in Ottawa these

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June 9, 2020 1 Comment

A Decline in Apprenticeships?

[the_ad id=”12709″] A few years ago, I made the observation that Canada’s big run-up in apprenticeship numbers was highly correlated with the commodity price super-cycle (in particular, the price of oil) and that an era of low energy/commodity prices might lead to a big decrease in demand for apprentices.  Time to check on that prediction. So, first thing to note is that apprentice numbers are down a bit over the last couple of years.  Probably not as much as expected if one

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June 14, 2018 1 Comment

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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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