By . My work exists at the junction of a few different fields – management, public administration, sociology and economics (which is kind of funny because my degree is in none of those things) – all of which have their own specialized jargon. One of more jargon-y terms that I know I use a lot is “human capital”, a term which often seems to be misconstrued. So, I thought I would give an explanation a shot. More...
By . Hey, does anyone remember FutureSkills Lab? That big idea that came out of the Barton Committee about a year and a half ago and included in the 2017 budget with at least moderate amounts of fanfare? The one that was supposed to “identify skill gaps with employers, explore new and innovative approaches to skills development and share information so that Canadians are well equipped for opportunities in the new economy”. More...
By . I got a bit of blowback for Friday’s blog criticizing that U of T/Brock piece on the alleged Brain Drain. Nobody tried to argue that my critique of the methodology was wrong, but some argued that a) data on migration is always terrible and I was making the perfect the enemy of the good and b) I was ignoring the core truth that a lot of Canadian tech talent does head south and this makes things difficult for Canadian tech firms, and snark is well and good but what are we going to do about this migration. More...
By . Periodically, in Canada, someone comes up with a statistic about higher education. Doesn’t matter if it makes the least bit of sense – as long as it serves somebody’s political narrative. This statistic can go ON and ON unchallenged for years unless someone steps on it quickly. More...
By . Following on the theme of yesterday’s blog on May ’68, I recently read a volume of papers edited by University of Surrey Professor Rachel Brooks called Student Politics and Protest: International perspectives (Research into Higher Education)
By . Good news! There is now a litmus test in Ontario to see which interest groups and/or political parties – if any – actually care about expanding access to post-secondary education and which just prefer grandstanding about tuition and/or student aid. More...
By . An Australian colleague of mine once suggested to me that I built my career primarily on filling in the holes in Statistics Canada’s severely limited PSE stats. I don’t think this is actually true, but it probably is fair to say that some of the breaks in my career have involved explaining Canadian PSE to the rest of the world in terms they can understand. More...
By . I can’t quite get my head around Alberta these days. You’ve got a left-wing government banging on about accessibility while providing proportionately the fewest need/income-based grants of any provincial government. You’ve got a right-wing opposition which is just mad as hell that the federal government doesn’t have a national policy to force Eastern Canada to buy Canadian oil instead of foreign oil. More...
By . The Open University, described by several commentators as one of the most successful innovations in Britain since the Second World War, is currently going through an existential crisis, which culminated two weeks ago with the resignation of its Vice-Chancellor, Peter Horrocks, following a devastating vote of no confidence by faculty and staff. More...HEPI calls for an urgent reinvigoration of part-time learning before Brexit, more support for students’ living costs and a co-ordinated strategy for fighting ignorance about university life among those applying for higher education
In line with this week’s Call for Evidence deadline, the Higher Education Policy Institute (HEPI) is today publishing its response to the Review of Post-18 Education and Funding, entitled Post-18 Review: 10 Points-of-Note on fixing the broken parts of our education and training system. More...
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