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Tag: Employment

The “Skills for Jobs Blueprint”

I don’t pay as much attention as I should on this blog to matters British Columbian, mostly because I don’t get out there often enough.  But the province’s “Skills for Jobs  Blueprint” cries out for some critical treatment, because frankly it’s not all that smart. Turn back the clock a bit: in April 2014, the BC government rolled-out a series of policies that were collectively branded as the “Skills for Jobs Blueprint”.  Much of it consisted of relatively sensible changes

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February 4, 2015 No Comments

Some Scary Graduate Income Numbers

Last week, the Council of Ontario Universities put out a media release with the headline “Ontario University Graduates are Getting Jobs”, and trumpeted the results of the annual provincial graduates survey, which showed that 93% of undergraduates had jobs two years after graduation, and their income was $49,398.  Hooray! But the problem – apart from the fact that it’s not actually 93% of all graduates with jobs, but rather 93% of all graduates who are in the labour market (i.e.

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September 8, 2014 1 Comment

Improving Career Services Offices

Over the last few years, what with the recession and all, there has been increased pressure on post-secondary institutions to ensure that their graduates get jobs.  Though that’s substantially the result of things like curriculum and one’s own personal characteristics, landing a job also depends on being able to get interviews and to do well in them.  That’s where Career Services Offices (CSOs) come in. Today, HESA released a paper that looks at CSOs and their activities.  The study explores

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August 11, 2014 1 Comment

What The Heck Did You THINK Was Going to Happen?

I’m a bit bewildered by some of the recent commentary about declining returns to education, most notably last week’s paper from CIBC on the subject.  While the actual report was not nearly as stupid as the ream of press coverage that followed it, it still had a few howlers, and definitely lacked critical thinking. First, the howlers.  1) The returns to Bachelor’s degrees are not declining; they are, in fact, growing at a slightly slower rate than at other levels of education,

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September 3, 2013 2 Comments

The Neo-Soviet View of Education and the Labour Market

Recently, I had a conversation with someone in the trucking industry who argued that the phenomenon of Arts grads working minimum wage jobs while trucking companies were having problems hiring people at $30/hour was prima facie evidence for a “skills mismatch” for which the education system was responsible.  Seriously.  Turns out that a lot of people – including a hell of a lot of people in government from all political stripes – seem to think that a “skills mismatch” is

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August 12, 2013 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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