Measuring Social Mobility in Higher Education
By . It’s not like it’s impossible to do. In the UK, the University and College Application Service simply analyses the postal codes of applicants and students and use that to track changes over time. Are student entry rates going up or down for poor students transferring directly from secondary school? You don’t need to guess. More...
Canada’s International Education Strategy Mark II (bis)
By . A couple of people have pointed out that I may have rushed to some conclusions about the meaning behind the International education strategy. Isn’t it possible, some asked, that this wasn’t about a new strategy to attract students, but a strategy to send students abroad. More...
Canada’s International Education Strategy Mark II
By . The initial impression made by this phrasing is not very good. Sure, it makes sense that within the Government of Canada, Global Affairs and ESDC takes the lead on this file. But the lack of any mention of provinces, faculty, universities, colleges, etc, in the announcement – the people who pay for and deliver post-secondary education and who will have to deal with any changes to international education policy – should ring alarm bells. More...
France’s New International Education Strategy
By . On Monday, Campus France (which is roughly equivalent to Canada’s CBIE, if CBIE were an arms-length government agency) published its new Stratégie d’attractivité pour les étudiants internationaux. It’s an intriguing document for a couple ofreasons so I thought I would talk a bit about it today. More...
Re-litigating New Brunswick’s Tax Credits
By . You know what? We at HESA Towers can help with that! Evidence-based analysis is what we do! Let’s see if we can’t save the cash-strapped government of New Brunswick a few bucks and do some of this analysis for them, gratis. More...
Ford’s Francophone Fracas
By . Among those legislative and oversight offices abolished last week was that of the French Language Services Commissioner, which is widely – and correctly – viewed as a key pillar supporting minority language rights in the province. Ontario francophones – and to some degree francophones in Québec as well (see Patrick Lagacé’s forceful piece in English (!) in yesterday’s La Presse) are rightly angry. More...
Better Northern Higher Education Strategy
By . Higher education strategy in the Canadian north is tricky. Challenges include from the huge distances, the tiny populations, and the responsibility to support Indigenous populations with specific cultural, educational and scientific needs. More...
New Digital Universities
By . Last week Tony Bates, arguably the doyen of Canadian digital education, posted an intriguing little article called Why Canada Needs Five New Digital Universities on his blog at the Contact North website. Basically, Bates’ argument is that the future of learning is hybridized learning – that is a mix of face-to-face and online learning – though we don’t yet know exactly how best to mix those two to achieve best results for different learners at different levels in different subjects. More...
Wānangas, Tribal Colleges, and Canadian Indigenous PSE Institutions
By . Now I’ve written a little bit about Wānangas before, and they certainly are an interesting model. New Zealand has three of them: the largest of the three (Te Wānanga o Aotearoa) has over 20,000 students in 80 or so locations across New Zealand (they’ve largely avoided getting bogged down in campus infrastructure), with a set of program offerings not entirely unlike those of Canadian polytechnics. More...