Quick Hitter

Hello there and hope you all had a brilliant summer and don't mind my sporadic posting of news stories here. For more regular post you can check out the New Media and Politics blog (it's a lot more opinionated -- these are news stories you shouldn't miss regardless of how busy school and life get).

The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) study has found that Canada spends more and more on higher education, an increasing percentage of the cost is borne by students and their families. In financial terms, the benefits of a postsecondary education to individuals and Canadian society at large far outweigh the costs -- the OECD estimates that the average Canadian man with a college or university education makes more than three times what he put into getting such an education, both in terms of direct costs and lost wages. For the average woman, the gain is more than double the cost.

Findings contained in Education Indicators in Canada, a wide-ranging collection of data released by the Council of Education Ministers, that looks at education levels found Canadians are better educated than they were a decade ago and have some of the highest rates of post-secondary attendance in the developed world.

Sadly and incomprehensibly the report also shows that women are graduating from both high school and post-secondary in much higher numbers than men, but continued to earn far less in the workforce.