The World of Higher Education Podcast Listen now →

The World of Higher Education Podcast Listen now →

Category: Budgets

The Coming Federal Cuts – Part 3: ISED

Monday, we looked at the country’s overall financial situation (dire), and yesterday we looked at how cuts of a magnitude of 15% might affect key programs like the Canada Education Savings Program and the Canada Student Financial Assistance Program. Today, we’re going to look at how a 15% cut might affect the Government of Canada’s research subsidies, which in the main are run through the Ministry of innovation, Science and Economic Development (ISED).  (I will be speaking about “the tri-councils”

Read More »
September 10, 2025 2 Comments

The Coming Federal Cuts – Part 2: ESDC

Yesterday, I explained why the federal government now finds itself in a position where it has to cut program budgets by at least 15% just to keep the budget deficit to $50 billion by 2028. Today, I am going to explain how this will play out at Employment and Social Development Canada (ESDC), which plays a major role in funding for skills and education in Canada, mainly through the Canada Education Savings Program (CESP) and the Canada Student Financial Assistance

Read More »
September 9, 2025 2 Comments

The Coming Federal Cuts – Part 1

The biggest thing everyone is going to be talking about this year – barring another university doing a surprise Laurentian – is the set of federal cuts coming down the pike. They are big. And they are nasty. So, it’s worth understanding exactly the scale of what is heading in our direction. This is going to be a three-parter. Today, I will talk about the overall size of the cuts to come, and on Tuesday and Wednesday I will talk

Read More »
September 8, 2025 1 Comment

Summer 2025

So. This is the last blog of the academic year. Service resumes Tuesday, 2 September. It’s been a long year. I’m pretty tired. How about you? This was the year it all kind of came crashing down: not just here in Canda, but everywhere else too. It’s too long to go through and my more faithful readers already know the story. It’s not just in Canada. In France, Australia, and the UK, we saw institutions having similar problems: all these

Read More »
June 11, 2025 1 Comment

Provincial Budgets 2025-26

Ok everyone, all the provincial budgets are in and so it’s time for our annual look at what another round of irresponsible pan-partisan political leadership has wrought for our sector for the next twelve months. Figure 1 shows the province-by-province breakdown of this year’s budgets, showing the change in transfers to institutions in real dollars over 1 year and 5 years for each of the ten provinces. In most provinces, collecting this data is pretty easy—you just look at the

Read More »
May 20, 2025 1 Comment

One Thought to Start Your Day

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.

Subscribe

Search Posts

Search Publications

Social Media

Linkedin Youtube Spotify

Recent Posts

More thoughts on...