New company responsible for research and compilation of Globe's Canadian University Report

Responsibility for the Globe and Mail's annual survey of student higher education rankings has now been shifted to a new company called Higher Education Strategy Associates.

The company's president, Alex Usher, previously with the Toronto office of the Virginia-based Education Policy Institute, has announced that EPI Canada has closed its doors and, in its place several new Canadian-based ventures are starting up, run by former EPI staff. Usher will also be writing a weekly online column called Eye on Higher Education.  (From 1996 to 1998, Usher served as a researcher and lobbyist for the Association of Universities and Colleges of Canada and had been director of research and program development at the Canada Millennium Scholarship Foundation.)

The Globe's annual Canadian University Report survey is a direct print and online competitor of Maclean's magazine's annual university rankings. The survey itself has been administered by polling firm The Strategic Counsel; Higher Education Strategy Associates had been responsible for compiling other data, mostly from public sources, to augment student responses.Now it will be responsible for all research and data. The Strategic Counsel is no longer involved.

  Usher says in a release, the survey will be revamped to make it shorter and more relevant, providing "new and innovative information beyond simple measures of satisfaction."