Village Gamer

Canada’s relatively low number of people with advanced qualifications— such as PhDs—could be contributing to our failing grade on innovation, according to The Conference Board of Canada’s latest How Canada Performs analysis.

“The education and skills of the labour force are the underpinnings of innovation. Canada gets excellent results from its education system as a whole. However, Canada’s performance begins to slip as we climb the educational ladder. Indeed, Canada falls to the back of the pack when it comes to advanced knowledge and skills, such as graduates from PhD programs and science and engineering disciplines,” said Michael Bloom, Vice-President, Organizational Effectiveness and Learning. “Our analysis finds a link between a country’s innovation performance and the number of PhDs and science and engineering graduates.”

Canada ranked 14^th out of 17 peer countries in overall innovation performance in the Conference Board’s How Canada Performs Innovation report card (published in 2010). Moreover, Canada has obtained consistent “D” grades in innovation performance since the 1980s. Yet Canada is a consistent top performer overall in the Education and Skills report card, ranking second only to Finland in the most recent release. Canada’s ranking slips, however, as we move from high-school completion (second) to university completion (fifth) to PhD graduates (last of 17).

The Conference Board found a positive relationship between higher PhD graduation rates and a country’s patenting activity. Patents are a commonly used measure of innovation activity, tracking how knowledge is being transformed into invention. Countries that rank high on patents – such as Switzerland, Sweden and Germany – also have high PhD graduation rates. Canada ranked 14^th out of 17 countries on patents by population and last on PhD graduates. Read the rest of this entry »