By Alex Usher. If one takes a historical approach, then there are, broadly speaking, three types of colleges in Canada.  There are Quebec’s CEGEPs, which are sui generis both in Canada and internationally.  Technically creatures of the 1960s, their roots go back over a century to the French Catholic tradition of colleges classiques, which were a major form of both secondary and post-secondary education (they straddled the two) from the early nineteenth century onwards. Following the Parent Report, these colleges had a secondary vocational mission tacked on to them in the re-organization of the Quebec education system after the Parent Report. More...

By Alex Usher. You may have seen that late last week, the Business Higher Education Roundtable (BHER) rounded up a number of big names from colleges, universities and businesses to sign a letter to Finance Bill Morneau calling for the development of a National Work-Integrated Learning (WIL) Strategy as part of the 2019 Budget.  What should we make of this. More...

By Alex Usher. Yesterday was Education at a Glance release day.  That’s usually the time when I take a look at the latest data from across the OECD  and point out that in fact we in Canada have it pretty good.  Or, at least that was the piece I expected to be writing yesterday morning.  Until I found out that Canadian data was missing from more than just the usual number of tables. More...

By Alex Usher. There are two constructs that make it extremely difficult to talk sensibly about who should pay for higher education.  The first is “affordability” and the second is “independence”, in the sense of students’ independence from the rest of their family.  It’s worth exploring these concepts in detail to see how they complicate analysis. More...

A University of South Alabama student was suspended after university officials say the student confessed to hanging a bicycle and two nooses in a tree on campus Tuesday. More...