Morning all.  A few housekeeping notes: this is my last blog for 2023: normal service resumes January 8^th.  A bit of a change-up for the next two days: the AI blog will appear tomorrow instead of Thursday, and our last podcast of the year – with Boston College’s Phil Altbach about national academic excellence initiatives – will move to Friday.

Now, on to the blog:

2023 was in many ways not a good year for higher education in Canada.  The federal budget was a deep disappointment.  In nine out of ten provinces, higher education funding did not keep place with inflation.  Provincial leadership in education policy has become so weak that the federal immigration minister now de facto exerts more control over higher education policy than any federal official, ever.  And boy, are the immigration ministry’s ideas about how to use that power deeply undertheorized (to put it politely).   

And there is no one riding to the rescue.  In Ontario, the government chose not to respond to a blue ribbon panel that laid out the parlous state of provincial university finances (and apart from U of T, Algoma and McMaster, they are all at least somewhat parlous).  In Quebec, the provincial government’s main policy pre-occupation in higher education is to work out how best to knee-cap its own anglophone universities.  Alberta and BC are looking at 30% growth in their post-secondary numbers over the next decade, and yet both provinces only provide lump-sum funding to institutions plus some targeted funding here and there – general growth simply is not funded either at the level of capital or operations.  At the federal level, the Liberals seem simply unpersuaded by any of the arguments for more funding being put forward by the sector, and yet the sector seems unable to come up with any new ones.  And the alternative – a government run by Convoy Doughnut Delivery Boy Pierre Poilievre – seems very unlikely to be an improvement on the current lot.

There are two roots of the problem.  The first is that Canada has lost the sense that technologically-led economic growth is even possible.  It’s not just that GDP has been flat for the better part of a decade, it’s that Canadians – or Canadian politicians anyways – seem to have trouble imagining growth occurring outside the resources sector absent obscene levels of government support (the subsidies promised for the VW and Stellantis battery plants, for instance, exceed the country’s entire annual public spending on post-secondary education).  But the second is that it’s not even a given that ifgovernments did regain a taste for knowledge-based economic growth they would see universities and colleges as natural partners.  Twenty years ago – maybe even ten – Canadian post-secondary education institutions had a booster section in Canadian business, one that has largely since disappeared. 

So, believe me when I tell you: things in the sector are going to get worse before they get better.   It’s time to give up the fantasy that we are going back to the late 00s when money was pouring in from all sides, let alone the dreamland of the early 1970s when governments collectively were comfortable spending 2% of GDP on higher education.  That’s all gone and it’s not coming back.  The future of universities is going to be to find new sources of revenue, being nimbler and market-smart.

Now, easier said than done. There are two big barriers to this kind of future.  The first is governments, who despite repeated bromides about making institutions more flexible and self-reliant are – almost without exception –the biggest obstacles to change, refusing to give universities the tools to adjust to changing demand.  Provincial program approval processes are slow and overly conservative, and thus contribute mightily to institutions’ inability to act as the nimble agents of change provinces claim to want.  The second is simply that change is hard.  Deliberately so, in the case of universities.  Academic staff – not unnaturally – are very loyal to the codes of the disciplines that got them their job in the first place, and that leads to a conservative outlook on change and definite unease about their institutions embracing the kinds of market-oriented change (i.e. shifting support from established disciplines to newer ones) that are likely necessary to win back public confidence.   

Now I don’t want to harp on the difficulties of change.  I mean hell, it’s only been three years since the entire sector pivoted on a vast scale to make it through the pandemic: the system can change if it wants to.  What seems to be more difficult to achieve is absent a world-shattering emergency.   What disappoints me most about the last 12 months or so is that institutions have for the most part abandoned any pretense at serious change – it’s just been so much easier to drift back to the pre-COVID status quo ante. 

For instance: Why aren’t there any Canadian institutions seriously pursuing that 25% or so of the Canadian student body that preferred remote education to the in-person version?  Why are there so few universities looking to make hybrid work at scale both online and in terms of in-person community-building?  Why has active talk among academic staff about pedagogy – such a huge part of the pandemic experience – been allowed to fall back to its earlier levels? Why is no one taking the reform of graduate degrees – hellishly and unnecessarily long in international context – seriously?  Why are so few universities grappling with their connection to economic growth (other than commissioning economic impact reports implying ever-more ludicrous benefit multipliers)?

I worry that the sector has forgotten how to dream.  I worry that we’ve all become fleece-wearing comfort addicts at the exact moment when a funding crisis requires the sector to be more creative, and demand more of itself.  We’ve been able to keep change at bay through the magic money tree of international students, but that’s over now.  It simply can’t continue like this.  Thoughtful change, which preserves the standards and values of higher education, while adapting to continuing economic and social shifts is what is needed.  And I am proud to head an organization which exists to help institutions do precisely that.

Anyways, that’s it from me.  As usual, if you have any comments or suggestions for the blog, I’d love to hear them (president@higheredstrategy.com).  Happy Holidays and, please – rest!  2024 will need you at your best.