How does Canadian education stack up against the rest of the world? Well, the simple answer in many cases is: we don’t know. That’s the verdict of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development’s annual education report, which found that much of what goes on in higher education cannot be measured, due to a lack of data. In fact, on most measures in the report, the OECD gives Canada an “M” – for “data missing.” There are more gaps in Canadian education than that of any other country.

The OECD —the body that publishes Education at a Glance, a report looking at 40 countries—was only able to gather 40 per cent of the data needed from Canada. Of 96 requested post-secondary education indicators, Canada was unable to provide 57. For example, Canada has no national information on college or university drop out rates.
 
“We can’t conduct the analysis—and neither can the OECD—because Canada can’t even supply the most basic information,” said Paul Cappon, president of the Canada Council on Learning. His organization, an independent non-profit funded by Human Resources and Social Development Canada, argues that Canada has “no clear picture” of how post-secondary education fares in comparison with other countries.
 
CCL believes that there are three reasons for the gap in data. Canada collects far less education data than other countries. The data that is collected is often not timely. And the data is not always gathered in the right way.
 
Among the missing information in the OECD report is participation, enrolment, and graduation rates of colleges, drop out rates in both colleges and universities, and information about who participates in post-secondary education. Canada ranked last out of 40 countries in regard to how much higher education information was available for the report, coming in behind countries such as the U.S.A., Croatia, Chile, and

Luxembourg.

Within Canada, the lack of information has also been identified as a hurdle in post-secondary education policy development. The April 2007, the Campus 2020 report, which looked at the future of colleges and universities in BC, noted the lack of data. The report recommended, “Initiate discussions with other governments with a view to obtaining agreement on the collection and reporting of national and internationally comparable standards and metrics for data collection and reporting.”
 
The Advantage New Brunswick report, an inquiry into higher education in that province published in September, noted, “The lifeblood of good policy is good information. Good information, in turn, requires accurate data carefully analysed. The collection of accurate and meaningful data … must be an important function.” Bob Rae’s 2005 provincial report on post-secondary education in Ontario similarly called for better data on the inputs and outputs of universities and colleges.
 
The OECD report isn’t the only document that has hit problems with Canadian data. The release of annual tuition stats collected by Statistics Canada has been delayed twice this year. Among the reasons for the delay are differences between provincial education policy.
 
Also, the annual report on the Canada Student Loan Program, released this summer, contained information that was three years old.