The World of Higher Education Podcast Listen now →

The World of Higher Education Podcast Listen now →

Tag: Demographics

Measuring the Effects of Student Loans

Measuring the effects of student loans is brutally difficult.  It sounds simple, but it’s not. Take a recent article called “Gender, Debt, and Dropping out of College“, published in Gender and Society, which made a small wave in access-conscious circles a couple of weeks ago.  Using data form the 1997 US National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, this article made two claims: first, that debt was positively correlated to completion up until a certain level of debt, after which the relationship reverses itself

Read More »
March 12, 2013 No Comments

MOOCs, Data, and the Public Interest

One of the reasons MOOCs are interesting as a pedagogical experiment is that, being online, they generate lots of capturable data.  This should create a data-rich environment which improves our understanding of learning processes, etc etc. So why is so little data about MOOCs actually being made public? Katy Jordan of the UK Open University just put together a nice little graphic about MOOC enrolment and success rates.  While her conclusions are interesting (avg enrolment = 50,000; avg. completion rate = 10%),

Read More »
March 1, 2013 3 Comments

The Effect of Tripling Tuition Fees: UK Latest

As most of you know, UK tuition fees more or less tripled this past year. The initial applicant/enrolment data from a couple of months ago (which I covered, here) indicated that applications fell by about 8%, but also that the drop came almost entirely from older students (among traditional-aged students, the drop was just 1%).  Worrying, but not apocalyptic. Last week, two new interesting pieces of data were released.  The first was application data by race; though Black and Asian

Read More »
January 21, 2013 3 Comments

The Other Demographic Challenge

Okay, so everyone knows that demography’s an issue in higher education. Fewer students means more competition. More old people means more pressure on pensions and health care and hence more competition for public subsidies. Tough times ahead for higher ed, right? Well, yes. But there’s another impact of demography which I don’t think anyone’s really absorbed yet. It’s the impact of a shrinking or stagnant labour market, and in many ways, it could be the most significant demography-related challenge of

Read More »
October 15, 2012 1 Comment

Anticipating Demographic Shifts

I was in Regina last week speaking to the university’s senior management team about challenges in Canadian post-secondary education, when someone asked a really intriguing question. “Given the changing demographics of Canada, with fewer traditional-aged students, are there any examples of good practice of universities altering their programming serving non-traditional students instead”? I have to admit, I was stumped. You’d think, for instance, that maritime universities, who have been facing demographic decline for quite some time, would have some experience

Read More »
August 30, 2011 1 Comment

One Thought to Start Your Day

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.

Subscribe

Search Posts

Search Publications

Social Media

Linkedin Youtube Spotify

Recent Posts

More thoughts on...