Morning all.  Welcome back.  Everyone emotionally prepared for the semester?  No, me neither.

So, it’s been an eventful summer.  The Saudi spat was most unfortunate: several thousand lives disrupted and a short-term hit of about $140 million to Canadian universities and colleges (they’ll make it all up on next year’s intake).  There’s some buzz around Ottawa on next year’s (pre-election) budget, particularly with respect to Indigenous education, something I’ll be talking about over the next couple of weeks.  And, of course, the Future Skills Centre (formerly FutureSkills Lab) process continues to be an unmitigated disaster, with the feds actively wringing out whatever possible good might have come from this idea.

One thing that surprisingly didn’t happen over the summer was much in the way of any enlightenment with respect to how the Conservative government in Ontario might treat post-secondary education.  That’s partially because higher education isn’t a high priority file and the Minister (Merrillee Fullerton) isn’t among the cabinet heavyweights, but also partially because when the new government instituted a hiring freeze it did so in a way that prevented itself from hiring any policy staffers.  Which means, in effect, all ministers have been running without a staff since late June.  This problem has now apparently been fixed and hiring has begun, but it means the government is a few weeks behind where it probably wanted to be in implementing actual policy.  Stay tuned.

There are a number of events to look forward to this term.  This first that happens is tomorrow’s launch of HESA’s The State of Postsecondary Education in Canada, which is our first annual statistical portrait of our country’s post-secondary institutions, students and finances.  We here at HESA Towers are pretty excited about it, and hope you all will find it of use (and if you don’t read it right away, that’s OK – I can pretty much guarantee most of the material will end up in the blog sooner or later).

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The other events are, unfortunately, a little more prosaic.  There’s an election on in Quebec, with a vote to be held on October 1^st.  Judging from the party platforms, it would appear post-secondary education is nowhere near the forefront of the voters’ minds, but it’s still a pretty big deal.  South of the border, the US mid-term elections are set for November 6^th.  This matters more to Canadian PSE than you might realise.  President Trump is now quite obviously trying to wreck the Western alliance.  Policymakers in Canada, Germany, and elsewhere have been trying very hard in public not to acknowledge this: the strategy to date has basically been “keep your head down, it all be over in four years, we can forgive the Americans their one lapse and go back to normal”.  But this only works if Trump is gone in four years or less.  If the midterms go unexpectedly well for the Republicans and the possibility of an eight-year Trump presidency begins to loom, then the Western alliance in effect has to re-build itself, only this time without the Americans.  This will be an enormous, difficult and above all expensive task.  Most other policy fields, including post-secondary education, will find attracting government dollars and attention to be significantly harder.  I tend to think the Democrats will do well, but then again I was convinced Hillary would win, so what do I know?

Internationally, assuming the Saudis don’t start picking fights with other medium-sized countries, most of the attention is going to be on Brexit and its implications.  I still tend to think Brexit won’t happen, but keep an eye on the UK anyway because the general higher education policy debate is pure carnage, even the bits which are not Brexit-related.  And if you want a sleeper story: keep an eye on Malaysia: the battle to de-BN-ify the higher education system after 60 years of Barisan National rule could get very interesting: there will be flashpoints around the appointment of new Vice-chancellors, and whether to continue with the previous government’s strategic plans and policies (it has already deep-sixed the integrated Cumulative Grade Point Average project which a lot of foreign education wonks were lauding as a huge innovation in student assessment.).

And looming in the background?  A recession.  The US has just about equalled its all-time record for successive quarters of economic growth.  Even if the White house weren’t occupied by a racist toddler, these would be dangerous times.  As it is, I think a US recession in the next 18 months is a nailed-on certainty, and it is unlikely we here in Canada will be spared its side-effects.  This is something every institution needs to keep firmly in mind for its medium-term planning exercises.

In other words…things may be about to get bumpier.  The prospect of a federal election and the various goodies that come along with it will help for a bit, but the medium term looks a bit ugly.  Balancing that to some extent is the fact that the cost impact of the end of mandatory retirement now appears to have been fully absorbed by institutions.  Sure, faculty are now on average more expensive than they used to be as a result, but at least the situation isn’t going to get any worse.  So yes, revenue weakness, but fewer cost-side pressures, too – at least if institutions can keep the rest of their budgets under control.

So, welcome back everyone.  It’ll be an interesting year.