The Chronicle News Blog: Canadian Prosperity Is at Risk Without Higher-Education Strategy, Report Says
Canada’s lack of a national higher-education strategy is imperiling the country’s future prosperity, according to a report issued on Tuesday by the Canadian Council on Learning, a federally supported nonprofit group.
The report, “Post-Secondary Education in Canada,” looked at colleges, universities, and vocational programs, and concluded that Canada lacks national benchmarks and sufficient information on the sector. That dearth of national higher-education data is a growing issue among educators, researchers, and policy makers.
The report also recommended adopting a lifelong “unique student identifier” number that could track the academic progress of students who switch institutions or transfer from one province to another, helping efforts to monitor retention figures, graduation rates, and career-related education.
The proposal is similar to a controversial call last year by the U.S. Department of Education to create a “unit-record database.” A majority of Americans oppose the proposal, according to one poll, and members of Congress have repeatedly voted to forbid the database’s creation.
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