Tag: Ontario

A Short Explainer of Public Private Partnerships in Ontario Colleges

I always get questions about international students and visas when I travel across Canada talking to university and college audiences.  And what I find is that in most parts of the country, they are genuinely puzzled about what is happening in Ontario.  Most say they have heard about all these “unscrupulous private colleges” who are “taking advantage of students.” Online, more racist theories suggest this is a story of “human trafficking” in which these “private colleges” are “in on a

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State of Postsecondary Education in Canada 2023

Rejoice, all!  For today is the publication for The State of Postsecondary in Education, 2023, your annual statistical guide to all things in our sector.  This year’s edition does not contain any new chapters or appendices, but we have expanded coverage of certain matters related to the student body, particularly with respect to gender and to international students.   With hundreds of pages and graphs, I know you’re going to be up all night reading it.  Try not to strain yourselves. 

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Performance-Based Funding in Europe

If you’re in North America, you know that one of the perennial debates in higher education finance is about the efficacy of performance-based funding, or PBF, with the bulk of the academic evidence suggesting in one way or another that such schemes do not achieve their purported aims. On this week’s episode of The World of Higher Education Podcast, Dr. Ben Jongbloed from the Centre for Higher Education Policy Studies – that’s CHEPS – at the University of Twente in

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What Six Questions Tell Us About the Ontario Government

In the final scenes of the 1991 movie The Russia House, as Sean Connery is about to give “the shopping list” – a comprehensive list of questions about Soviet rocket technology – to what MI6 and the CIA believe is a potential Russian defector, there’s a conversation between a young agent and Edward Fox, who plays Sean Connery’s handler. “Sir, the shopping list.  It’s only questions isn’t it?  It wouldn’t tell anyone anything?” “Everything.  It would tell what we know

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Three Takes on the Latest Ontario Universities Applications Data

The Ontario High School Application numbers dropped last week, and I thought it would be worth a quick tour of the data.  Two things first: First: I know folks from outside Ontario get cheesed off about the way I keep banging on about Ontario numbers, but here’s the thing: the rest of y’all don’t publish your data.  I cannot write about hidden data: sorry. Second: speaking of hidden data, the Ontario Universities Application Centre, for extremely flimsy reasons, has stopped

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