By Alex Usher. I’ve been hard on Statscan lately because of their mostly-inexcusable data collection practices.  But every once in awhile the organization redeems itself.  This week, that redemption takes the form of an Analytical Studies Branch research paper by Marc Frenette and Kristyn Frank entitled Do Postsecondary Graduates Land High-Skilled Jobs?  The implications of this paper are pretty significant, but also nuanced and susceptible to over-interpretation.  So let’s go over in detail what this paper’s about. More...

By Alex Usher. There are a few gems scattered through Statistics Canada’s archives. Digging around their site the other day, I came across a fantastic trove of documents published by the Dominion Bureau of Statistics (as StatsCan used to be called) called Higher Education in Canada. The earliest number in this series dates from 1938, and is available here. I urge you to read the whole thing, because it’s a hoot. But let me just focus in on a couple of points in this document worth pondering. More...

By Alex Usher. So, any day now, the report of the Government of Canada’s Science Policy review should be appearing.  What is that, you ask?  Good question. More...

By Alex Usher. Back in early December, the Ottawa Citizen reported on a controversy at the University of Ottawa.  Basically, the story was that the University is facing a $20 million budget shortfall, the administration is consulting re: how to cut its budget and some people are very upset with some of the proposed solutions. More...

By Alex Usher. Big news in Alberta the other day: the University of Alberta has decided to cut fourteen (14!) programs, in the humanities. That’s on top of a programs cull just two years ago in which seventeen programs – mostly in Arts – were also axed! Oh my God! War on the humanities, etc, etc.
Or at least that’s the way it sounds, until you read the fine print around the announcement and realise that these fourteen programs, collectively, have 30 students enrolled in them. The puzzle here, it seems, is not so much “why are these programs being cancelled” as “why on earth were they ever approved in the first place”. More...

By Alex Usher. A couple of days ago, after looking at employment patterns among recent graduate using Ontario graduate survey data, I promised a look at broader youth labour market data. I now wish I hadn’t promised that because Statistics Canada’s CANSIM database is an ungodly mess and has got significantly worse since the last time I tried to use its data. More...

By Alex Usher. First off, let’s recollect that where higher education is concerned, the US, like Canada, is a federation where the main decisions about funding public education are made at the state level. Decreased state investment in institutions and consequent rises in tuition have given the federal government a larger though indirect role in the system because the salience of student aid has risen. More...

By Alex Usher. Everyone seems to be enjoying data on graduate outcomes, so I thought I’d keep the party going by looking at similar data from Ontario colleges. But first, some of you have written to me suggesting I should throw some caveats on what’s been covered so far. So let me get a few things out of the way. More...