Category Education
The National Graduates Survey, student satisfaction, and the politics of statistics
One way to measure students' satisfaction with their educational experiences is to ask graduates, if they could choose again, if they would select the same program. Canada's National Graduates Survey (NGS) has been asking some variation on that question since 1982. The questions asked, and the percentage of students saying that they would select the […]
Could you pass a 1950s Econ 1000 exam?
Principles of economics final exams set out, implicitly, the core of the discipline. Their questions are designed to test understanding of fundamental economics concepts; the ideas that are the foundation of economic analysis. So when I came across Clifford L. James's Principles of Economics (first published in 1934; ninth edition in 1956), complete with final […]
Is the war over higher education spreading north?
In the US, higher education has become a partisan issue. While Democrats view colleges and universities as having a positive effect on the way things are going in the country, a majority of Republicans now view colleges and universities as a negative influence (see this Pew survey). There is also a partisan divide in the US […]
Why don’t more economics students get SSHRC doctoral fellowships?
In 2017*, just seven economics PhD students were awarded SSHRC doctoral fellowships, according to data provided by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) to the Canadian Economics Association. Put another way, only 1.6 percent of the 430 new SSHRC doctoral fellowships awarded that year went to students studying economics. The immediate cause of […]
The gendered impact of eliminating mandatory retirement
On March 6th, the Higher Education Quality Council of Ontario released a report on the sustainability of university expenditures. One of the issues highlighted in the report was financial cost of eliminating standard retirement at age 65. As Simona Chiose reported in the Globe, Ontario professors "who are 66 and older have an average salary […]
Looking for a University President
“Some people think that a college president’s life is full of joys and a host of friends. I know that he frequently walks in sorrow and alone because of the times he must do what seems impossible.” Paul V. Sangren (1948) “What a President Learns” Journal of Higher Education, 19, 6, 287-288. Well, my university […]
A composition effect in earnings growth and education attainment levels in Canada
I came across this post by Mickey Kaus a while ago, on trends in US earnings broken down by education attainment levels. From about the mid-70s to the mid-90s, earnings growth diverged sharply: increasing strongly for those with high levels of education, and falling for people with lower levels of education. Earnings growth has been […]
PhD Vouchers
Canadian universities have strong incentives to create PhD programs, and admit students into those programs. This is because provincial governments typically provide generous funds for each PhD student a university takes in. Also, PhD students are useful and cheap workers. Moreover, having a PhD program raises an academic unit's status, by signalling that it is a "research" […]
Should professors tell students exactly what they expect?
Imagine, for a moment, that students acquire valuable human capital during their time at university. Imagine that the grades on a student's transcript reflect his or her level of human capital. Imagine that, every term, a professor uses examinations, term papers, and other assignments, to measure how much human capital each student has acquired over the […]
Economists don’t get SSHRC money, grad student edition
The other day a colleague was explaining how SSHRC-funded Canada Graduate Scholarships are awarded at my university. "It's mostly driven by GPA," he said. "Grades in economics are so low that your students don't get a look in." I spent some time messing around with the SSHRC awards engine. His suspicion that relatively few Canada […]
Worthwhile Canadian Initiative 
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