Ontario eliminated mandatory retirement in 2006. Six years later, professors started to enter the quarter million dollar dollar club. This exclusive group is comprised of university professors aged 71 or older who, due to the curious interaction of federal pension legislation and academic collective agreements, are able to collect a full pension and a full […]

Summary: Harvey Weingarten, President of the Higher Education Quality Council of Ontario, describes learning outcomes as a "game-changer." A report by Richard Shireman argues that setting out learning outcomes has become, in some cases, nothing more than "worthless bean-counting and cataloging." In this extract from the draft version of my CEA Presidential Address, I talk […]

Here are the powerpoint slides (.pdf format) for my CEA Presidential Address "The Political Economy of University Education in Canada": DOWNLOAD WOOLLEY PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS SLIDES HERE.  The talk will be written up for the November issue of Canadian Journal of Economics, and I'll sketch out some of the main ideas here. Universities do two things. First, […]

[Updated to fix coding errors in some of my graphs.] Prices are determined by supply and demand. The supply of university-educated Canadians, relative to the supply of college or high school graduates, is increasing. University participation rates have been climbing for decades (Source: CAUT): Canada's points based immigration system, which prioritizes those with valuable skills, […]

Canada's baby boomers are now in their late 50s and 60s. They're done with university. Their kids, for the most part, are done with university. Sure, at some point the boomers' grandchildren might want a university education, but that is not an immediate or pressing concern. More urgent, from the baby boomer's point of view, […]

For 30 years, Canada's National Graduates Survey (NGS) has asking college and university graduates, "If you could choose again, would you select the same field of study or specialization that you completed?" As I explain here, the precise wording of the "would you do it again" question has changed over time, as has the placement […]

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 […]