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Tag: Economic Impact Statements

How to (and not to) Talk about Returns on Investment

Late this summer I came across a report from Polytechnics Canada, claiming to be a statement of Economic Impact of Polytechnics across the country. I have rarely read a document that left me with such profoundly mixed feelings, because it exemplified the absolute best and worst of the genre. Long-time readers will know that I have a deep interest in the subject of institutional Economic Impact statements. Five years ago I wrote this piece explaining why I thought the standard practice of

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October 1, 2024 No Comments

Evaluating the Superclusters

Yes, this again.  Why?  Because a few weeks ago the feds released an economic analysis of the benefits of Innovation Superclusters (recently rebranded as Global Innovation Clusters to make them sound slightly less ridiculous).  It’s horrible analysis, but since this topic unites my twin pastimes of making fun of crap economic impact analysis and crap pseudo-industrial policy, I could not resist.   Some background: early in the Liberals’ first term, they announced that the key to growth was clusters – that

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September 19, 2022 1 Comment

DIY Economic Impact Studies

If there is one thing that drives me spare about Canadian universities’ and colleges’ government relations operations, it’s their obsession with economic impact studies, and their habit of wasting tens of thousands of dollars every couple of years to do new ones.  You all need to stop.  It’s not just because no one believes any of the data (or rather, the people at whom these are aimed fully understand that since no opportunity cost analysis ever accompanies these studies, they

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February 3, 2022 No Comments

Institutional Economic Impact Statements Part 2

Yesterday, we looked at how Economic Impact Statements are put together.  Today, we want to look at the uses and misuses of these statements. Let’s start by acknowledging that these statements are not primarily designed to be objective, academic analyses of impact.  Rather, they are political documents, meant to put an institution in a good light.  There’s nothing wrong with that, but it means that they need to be read with a certain eye.  Given the built-in incentive to exaggerate

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November 18, 2020 1 Comment

Institutional Economic Impact Statements: The Basics

For all sorts of reasons, higher education institutions find the need to “show value”.  One of the ways they do this is through economic impact statements.  My HESA Towers colleague Michael Savage has been doing a review of these across Canada and in a couple of other countries and has come up with a really simple framework for thinking about them. Today and tomorrow we’ll be taking an in-depth look at what these documents can and cannot actually explain. Ready? 

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November 17, 2020 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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