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Category: Budgets

The Growth Budget We Aren’t Going to Get

There’s a federal budget coming later today.  I know, it’s hard to remember what one of those is like: it’s been 25 months and several hundred billion in unscheduled expenditures since we last had one.  As usual here at HESA Towers (well – virtual HESA Towers, or maybe HESA Towers-in-exile) will be bringing you analysis of what the budget means for post-secondary education.  But this morning, I thought I would give a sense of what I think is heading down

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April 19, 2021 No Comments

The Alberta Budget

Everything you need to know about last Thursday’s horror show in a handy Q&A session. Q: What’s the damage this time? A: I swear to God I do not understand how the province of Alberta explains anything financial.  The University of Alberta claimed the system-wide cut was $126 million, the Globe and Mail said it was $135 million.  I count the cut to operating institutions as being $175 million if you use the 20-21 budget as a base, and $142 million

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March 1, 2021 4 Comments

Laurentian Blues (4) – Who is Next?

Note: since the publication of this post, Concordia University and St. Thomas University have provided responses disagreeing with the assessment of this post. Click the university names above to read their respective positions. So, the mixed metaphor I keep hearing is that Laurentian is the canary in the coal mine, and there must be other dominoes ready to fall.  And people seem to assume I know who is next.  In fact, my priors are that there are probably not any

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February 9, 2021 3 Comments

Laurentian Blues (2)

I want to go into more detail on Laurentian, digging into finances, and correcting one or two things I got wrong yesterday. An unfortunate amount of time is going to be spent dragging Laurentian for bad data practices, but that can’t be helped. Let’s go back to this graph I showed yesterday. With a little bit more digging, I see that Laurentian claims that there were about $8 million in outstanding deficits prior to 2012-13, and that they are claiming

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February 4, 2021 12 Comments

Laurentian Blues (1)

Laurentian University will run out of cash at the end of February.  That’s the most important – but far from only – take-away of the Monitor’s Report filed Monday in an Ontario court as Laurentian University filed for creditor protection. People are throwing around words like “unprecedented” to describe what is happening at Laurentian.  I’m always careful about that because before WWII a lot of wild things happened in Canadian universities (the Honorary Bursar making off with the entire University

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February 3, 2021 19 Comments

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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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