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Category: Administration

College Finances 2021-22

Statscan released new data on community college enrolments and finances last month. That’s an excellent opportunity for me to update some of my favourite charts. Let’s start with what’s been happening in terms of income over the past couple of years. Turns out college revenue has been relatively stable at $14 billion over the past few years. The only exception was the COVID year of 2020-21 where income fell to $13.1 billion partly because of reduced tuition income (fewer international

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January 16, 2024 No Comments

Presidential Salaries, Redux

Every once in a while I write a piece comparing the salaries of Canadian University Presidents with the salaries of University Presidents in other countries (see here, here and here). These are always some of my least-liked pieces because what I write does not fit with people’s prejudices. Get faculty—or students, or the general public for that matter—started on what ails Canadian universities, and eventually the subject of “crazy Presidential salaries” gets mentioned. Even without looking at the data in

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January 15, 2024 5 Comments

Economies of Scale and the Unmanageability of Universities

I’ve recently had reason to ponder some of the mysteries of university management.  I’ve concluded that it’s much harder to run a university in a moderately efficient fashion than it is to run pretty much any other type of organization.  And I say this not because of the multiple veto- (or at least go-slow) points that get set up through the process of academic governance, but rather simply because disciplinary structures stand in the way of most useful economies of

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May 31, 2023 4 Comments

Full Participation

The Memorial University of Newfoundland Faculty Association (MUNFA) is on strike.  The strike seems not primarily about salaries (the two sides are not that far apart, 16% over 4 years vs 12% over 4 years plus a signing bonus) and only a bit about post-employment benefits (management wants to funnel new staff into a somewhat less generous pension plan).  Rather, if you follow many of the strikers online, you’ll see that the big rallying call is for “collegial governance”. Now,

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February 1, 2023 4 Comments

Another Suspect ANSUT Report

The Association of Nova Scotia University Teachers (ANSUT) recently released a report entitled A Culture of Entitlement, which purports to analyze the increase of executive salaries versus those of academic staff.  It’s being used as a rallying cry among several faculty unions which are either already (Cape Breton) or about to go (Saint Mary’s) on strike and is very much worth a read even if – as I show below – there are some major problems with the analysis. Readers

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January 31, 2023 1 Comment

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One Thought to Start Your Day is our founder and CEO Alex Usher’s popular daily blog, brimming with up-to-the-minute insights and informed opinions on today’s higher education industry.

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