Racialized postsecondary Canadian students

Additional information

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• The data and methods are subject to revision. All counts are randomly rounded. Percentages are calculated using rounded counts. Totals may not add up to the sum of all categories due to rounding.
• Estimates in this table are produced by integrating data from the Postsecondary Student Information System dataset (PSIS) with data from the 2016 Census and the 2021 Census. Non-linkage weights have been derived and applied to these estimates in order to be representative of the entire PSIS population.
• According to the Employment Equity Act, visible minorities are "persons, other than Aboriginal peoples, who are non-Caucasian in race or non-white in colour."
• The "Number of graduates" represents the number of individuals.
• The "Number of enrolled students" represents the number of individuals. Only one record per PSIS reporting cycle was retained for each individual. Since students can be enrolled in multiple programs at once, the highest educational qualification was retained. If they had multiple enrolments in the same educational qualification, one record was selected randomly.
• Enrolments are based on students enrolled in the postsecondary institutions at the time of the fall snapshot date, that is, a single date chosen by the institution which falls from September 30th to December 1st. Therefore students who are not enrolled during this time period are excluded and enrolment totals do not represent a full academic year. This has a greater impact on colleges as they have a continuous intake of students and shorter programs.
• These estimates include only Canadian students, where "Canadian students" include Canadian citizens and permanent residents.
• The educational qualifications pursued and obtained by students and graduates are grouped according to the definitions in the Classification of programs and credentials.
• For graduates, two adjustments are made to the educational qualification variable. (1) Medicine, Dentistry, Veterinary medicine, Optometry, Pharmacy and Law degrees reported as "Undergraduate degrees" or "Post-baccalaureate non-graduate degrees" are regrouped as "Professional degrees." (2) "Post-baccalaureate non-graduate degrees" in the fields of Education and Social work are regrouped with "Undergraduate degrees".
• The field of study is derived using the Cannabis STEM and BHASE groupings variant of the Classification of Instructional Programs (CIP) Canada 2016, which classifies fields of study into STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics and computer sciences) and BHASE (business, humanities, health, arts, social science and education) categories. BHASE also includes fields in legal studies, trades, services, natural resources and conservation.