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Category: Budgets

Postcard from Alberta (1)

I had the pleasure of spending a couple of days in Alberta last week, and I would spend some time writing about the ways in which Alberta higher education is structured differently from the rest of the country.  For that, I have to get into the public finance weeds. Twenty years ago, Alberta arguably had the best public service in the country (it’s still pretty good, but it’s fallen a bit).  One of the innovations they hit on as they

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January 27, 2020 1 Comment

That Alberta Budget

Alberta has long been a fiscal outlier in Canada. It is by some distance Canada’s richest province (in the sense that household incomes per capita are the highest) and its provincial governments—mostly Conservative, but with a New Democrat interlude between 2015 and 2019—have long provided Albertans with public services to match. However, the one thing the Alberta government refuses to do is impose a sales tax or even a particularly imposing regime of personal taxes, preferring instead to ride the

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October 25, 2019 3 Comments

Manitoba’s Curious Election

Manitoba votes tomorrow.  There’s not really much suspense in the whole thing: the Tories are going to get re-elected with a reduced majority.  And possibly because of the lack of suspense, the parties are treating this election in a very uncharacteristic manner. Ages ago – that is, before 1993 – political parties in Canada could say pretty much whatever they wanted and promise anything.  “We will spend more on education!” one party would say.  “No, more on housing!” another would

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September 9, 2019 No Comments

Sleepwalking towards Sydney

Morning all.  Our annual State of Postsecondary Education in Canada piece is now available on our website.  It updates the data from last year, plus adds a little bit of extra contextual data on the student body and international comparisons.  But more than anything else, it shines a light on one key theme: the changing finances of Canadian universities and colleges; and the consequence of the prolonged freeze in government transfers to institutions. Back in 2010-11, provincial governments were collectively handing over

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August 27, 2019 3 Comments

Delusional in Delhi

Last week, the Modi government in Delhi released a draft National Education Plan (NEP).  This is a big deal because the last new NEP came out over 30 years ago, and the Modi government has been promising a new one ever since it was first elected in 2014.  It’s also a big deal because it proposes some very big things, especially in higher education.  But Modi while has a reputation for talking up big goals, his track record on delivery is

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June 13, 2019 No 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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