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Category: Budgets

A Wish List for Budget 2017

A few days ago someone asked me what my wish list would be for the federal 2017 budget.  The science/innovation part of my answer will take a couple of posts to summarize (I’ll start addressing some of the issues related to the Science and Innovation Agendas over the next few days); but today I thought I’d give you my thoughts on the student aid part of the equation. Briefly, I have three wishes.  They are, in order: 1)      Implement the

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December 5, 2016 No Comments

Added Thoughts on Faculty Salaries

Back on Tuesday, I published some data on faculty salaries, which always gets people’ attention.  I’d like to address some of the feedback I received and make a couple of additional points.  The comments mostly converged on two areas: the appropriateness of the comparisons to the US and the interpretation of the reason for the rise in Canadian salaries. First, the US comparisons.  Some questioned the appropriateness of the dollar conversion factor.  I used Statscan’s published US-Canada PPP figure for

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December 2, 2016 7 Comments

Scientific Journal Prices & Library Purchasing Power

Last week’s pieces on libraries generated a fair bit of comment (I get the impression librarians don’t get attention that often).  So I thought I would come back for another pass on the subject. First a couple of clarifications.  First, apparently CARL’s data for UNB includes expenditures at both campuses while the student data relates only to the Fredericton campus.  So all those per-student expenditure figures for UNB?  They need to be cut by about 20%.  Also, I think I

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November 1, 2016 1 Comment

Fun With Library Statistics (Part 2)

Is there any part of the university that has been more transformed over the past decade than libraries?  One of the fascinating things about looking through old Canadian Association of Research Libraries (CARL) statistical reports is how many things weren’t counted, say ten years ago.  Expenditures on databases?  Not counted.  Logins to databases?  Searches or article requests?  Nope, nope.  Not that those things didn’t exist back then – they just weren’t central enough to university missions to be thought worth

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October 27, 2016 1 Comment

Fun With Library Statistics (Part 1)

The Canadian Association of Research Libraries (CARL) recently issued its annual statistical report.  I thought I’d take the opportunity over the next couple of days to take a look at a few interesting patterns in library practices and expenditures.  They shed some interesting light on the pressures Canadian academic libraries face right now. Some methodology here: CARL has 29 university members, from the very large U of T (almost 74,000 FTE students) to UNB (under 8,000 FTE students).  As a

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October 26, 2016 2 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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