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Fiona Deller and Martin Hicks — Is postsecondary education the great equalizer?

In a paper we published earlier this year, we wrote that access to postsecondary education starts early in the educational pathway, and isn’t an equal race for everyone. We know that youth from low-income and first-generation backgrounds (those whose parents did not go to postsecondary) have a particularly difficult time getting in. But what happens […]

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Fiona Deller — A better way to help students who need it most

Ontario’s approach to increasing equity of access to postsecondary education (PSE) follows a certain structured if faulty logic: Identify students who are not going to college, university or into apprenticeships, and then create supports to help them access PSE and succeed once there. Sounds good, right? Sounds logical? Except there are (at least) two big […]

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Fiona Deller and Martin Hicks — Spoiler alert: It’s the Ontario Education Number

With Thursday’s unveiling of the 2017 provincial budget, we’re reminded that last year’s budget included an announcement (with great fanfare) of reforms to the Ontario Student Assistance Program, or OSAP. Those reforms were designed to encourage and support more low-income youth to attend postsecondary education, and, as HEQCO has said before, that’s a really great […]

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Martin Hicks and Fiona Deller – An Homage to Good Data

Those of us focused on facts rather than anecdotes have known all along that the alleged collapse of employment opportunities for higher education graduates is untrue.  At HEQCO, we have published on this.  And now comes a major breakthrough, a significant step forward, in our data-driven understanding of outcomes for Canadian college and university graduates.  […]

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HEQCO – Hunting for Good WIL: Put quality before quantity

Work-integrated learning (WIL) and experiential education (EE) are hot topics.  This focus has been amplified by recent recommendations from the Business Council of Canada and the Ontario Premier’s Highly Skilled Workforce Expert Panel, as well as reinforced by comments from the Premier, that 100% of postsecondary students should have at least one WIL or EE […]

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Martin Hicks and Fiona Deller – Free Tuition: Neither a pig nor in a poke

Free tuition is not a political slogan.  It is an important new program that will increase access to higher education for low-income and marginalized Ontarians.  Now that we are finally ready to deploy it, let’s please not immediately politicize it away. A long time ago, back before 1991, Ontario’s student assistance program, OSAP, was pretty […]

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HEQCO – A triumph of evidence-based decision-making

In last Thursday’s budget, the Ontario government announced significant changes to the way student financial aid will be packaged to encourage greater participation of students from low income families.  These changes come after years of research from HEQCO, and other organizations, about the inhibitory effects of a high tuition sticker price and loan aversion on […]

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Fiona Deller – Ontario the attainment chart-topper — except in the trades

We can puff out our chests with pride. The most current OECD numbers show that Canada still tops the charts for postsecondary attainment — number one in college attainment, number one in overall attainment for 25 to 64 year olds. And Ontario’s at the top of the heap in both college and university attainment for […]

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Fiona Deller – Need to Read: Disruption, CBE and U2

Sharing the best in postsecondary news and commentary Back from vacation and I have a list of things to read that goes back a few weeks. So, here are just a few of the highlights: Clayton Christensen, of “disruptive innovation” fame, and Michelle Weise have written a new “mini-book” called Hire Education: Mastery, Modularization and […]