How International Tuition Fees Keep Canadian Universities Afloat
By . First, tuition fees for international undergraduate students. Nationally, these have been growing at a rate of inflation +4% over the past decade, which is substantially faster than the rise in domestic tuition (roughly, inflation +1.5%). Nationally, the average international tuition is $23,589, but both this figure and the recent run-up in tuition is due almost entirely to what is going on in Ontario. More...
Does Student Debt Matter If You’re Not Going to Pay It Back?
By . You can accumulate one hell of a lot of debt these days in the UK. Just in an undergraduate degree, fees are £9,000 per year plus you can get another £10,702 in maintenance loans per year of you’re studying in London. Over a three-year degree that’s £59,106 or a tad over $100,000 (yes, really). So, at face value one can understand the spate of stories coming out of the UK these days talking about how their massive debt loads are going to paralyze them for life, stop them being able to buy housing etc. More...
Cluster Theory
By . For some annoying reason, the Liberals act as if cluster theory is something new rather than something which dates back to the mid-1980s (Michael Porter’s The Wealth of Nations gave the idea its first mass-market outing in 1990; six years later, Saskia Sassen gave us what is probably still the most engaging short book description of cluster formation in Regional Advantage. In fact what is actually new – in Canada at least – is the idea that the federal government should encourage cluster formation/densification with great huge wads of cash. $800 million over four years, in fact, according to Liberal manifesto and the 2016 Budget. More...
Two (Relatively) Good News Studies
By . On Tuesday, the results for the 2015 PISA tests were released. PISA is, of course, that multi-country assessment of 15 year-olds in math, science and reading which takes place every three years and is managed by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). PISA is not a test of curriculum knowledge (in an international context that would be really tough); what it is instead is a test of how well individuals’ knowledge of reading, math and science can be applied to real-world challenges. More...
Alarm Bells in China
By . So, in the midst of all the handwringing about the world’s major higher education student destinations all losing their damn minds (Trump, Brexit) and the implications this has for higher education internationalization, I think we’re in serious danger of missing a much bigger story going on in China. More...
A Wish List for Budget 2017
By . A few days ago someone asked me what my wish list would be for the federal 2017 budget. The science/innovation part of my answer will take a couple of posts to summarize (I’ll start addressing some of the issues related to the Science and Innovation Agendas over the next few days); but today I thought I’d give you my thoughts on the student aid part of the equation. More...
Recommended Reading: A Digital Chief from Publishing Talks Anonymously
By O'Neal Spicer. A recently published article in Digiday provides an insider view of ongoing tensions that are still playing out in the world of publishing. The interviewee speaks to the challenges of running two parallel businesses, one that’s in decline but still generating cash, another that is growing but requiring significant investment, and the internal conflicts that are inherent to that dichotomy. More...
Pearson Releases a Significant Learning Design Aid
By Michael Feldstein. Last week, Pearson announced the release of some resources they have created around science-based learning design. More...
Explainer Videos on Course Exchanges and the Shared Infrastructure Behind Them
By Phil Hill. Two months ago O’Neal Spicer and I wrote an op-ed for the Community College Daily describing our observations on the California Online Education Initiative (OEI). We don’t often write about clients of ours, but in this case we felt it would be useful to share our thoughts outside of the consulting context, and the OEI staff agreed. More...
