Key Takeaways for This Post
- Differences in Educational Structures: The text highlights significant structural differences between the higher education systems in Canada and in the United States. Canada has a higher proportion of two-year colleges compared to the US. On the other hand, the US has a notable number of institutions offering programs of less than two years. Additionally, the US has a significantly higher percentage of private institutions.
- Similar IT Solution Trends: Despite structural differences, the implementation of IT solutions in higher education shows similar trends in both countries. While there are some variations in specific product preferences (e.g., Microsoft Teams being more popular in Canada for conferencing systems, and Canvas being the preferred LMS in the US), the overall landscape of IT solutions is comparable.
- Centralized Procurement Influence: In Canada, particularly in Québec and Ontario, the centralized procurement approach for educational institutions influences the adoption of certain IT solutions. This centralized system can lead to uniformity in product implementation, such as the widespread use of Koha and Moodle in Québec’s CÉGEP system.
It’s been at least five years since I last attended CANHEIT, one of my favorite conferences for the Canadian IT sphere. For several years, budget cuts led me to choose bigger events in the United States instead. In hindsight, I should have come back sooner. This conference is a gem for the Canadian IT community—small, relaxed, down-to-earth, and all about sharing.
The last time I attended, CANHEIT was much smaller and had only a handful of sponsors. Now, it’s grown significantly, boasting around 400 attendees and several dozen sponsors, and everything is completely sold out.
Feeling inspired, I am dedicating today’s post to exploring our growing data on Canadian HigherEd institutions and comparing it with our neighbors to the south.
Are Canada and the United States Different in Terms of Institution Composition?
Before diving into today’s topic, we must ask ourselves this critical question: Are Canada and the US different when we paint the portrait of higher education? Looking at our database of more than 7,000 institutions in Canada (almost 430 institutions) and the US (over 6,700 colleges), we see two different pictures.
Canada is all about colleges. Compared to the US, where community colleges account for just over 25% of all HigherEd institutions, almost 55% of Canadian institutions are two-year colleges and CÉGEPs (2-year colleges in the province of Québec). Four-year institutions represent 40% of the Canadian HigherEd landscape and about 45% of the US institutions. We see a big difference in the “less than two years” category, almost non-existent in Canada, which constitutes nearly 30% of US HigherEd institutions.
Why is this so? A simple explanation is the structure of the education systems in both countries. For example, in Canada, HVAC intricacies are taught in two-year colleges, while it’s offered in trade schools (included in the “less than two years” category) south of the border. Graduates from these programs will be able to perform the maintenance of your A/C system very well, but they will not receive their diploma from the same institution type, depending on whether they reside north or south of the border.
When we look at the enrollment spread, we don’t see much difference, except for the aforementioned reference to “less than two years” schools. What stands out most is the notion of private schools. In Canada, private schools are limited to 2-year colleges and a handful of universities. In the US, 68% of HigherEd institutions are private.
Current Market Shares in Four Product Categories
Coming back to our initial research objective to know if the IT solution landscape is similar in Canada and in the US, we have looked at our database and created a simple visualization with the available information.
- In the Conferencing Systems category, we notice that Microsoft Teams is more implemented in Canada proportionally.
- For the Library Information Systems, the impact of the CÉGEP system is clear, as Koha is its preferred solution. CÉGEPs use a central procurement approach similar to some state-wide systems.
- Brightspace and Moodle are two Learning Management Systems that are very popular in Canada in contrast to the US. Moodle is implemented in all Québec CÉGEPS (the second-most populous province in the country). Outside the Québec college system, other institutions often implement Brightspace, a Canadian solution. In the US, Canvas is the most implemented LMS.
- In the Student Information Systems category, Canada still has many homegrown systems, which are all implemented in four-year public institutions in Ontario and Québec, while some solutions like Jenzabar and Anthology SIS are mostly only present in the US.
Summary
Even though the educational structure is not quite the same, and the percentages may vary somewhat from one product to another for the four product categories studied in this post, Canada and the USA are similar overall when comparing the implementation of IT solutions at the HigherEd level. However, the centralized procurement in some province-wide college systems in Canada, mainly in Ontario and Québec, may influence the implementation trends for some product categories.
