The World of Higher Education Podcast Listen now →

The World of Higher Education Podcast Listen now →

Category: Budgets

Classroom Economics (Part 1)

One of the things that continually astonishes me about universities is how few people who work within them actually understand how they are funded, and what the budget drivers really are.  So this week I’m going to walk y’all through a simplified model of how the system really works. Let’s start by stating what should be – but too often isn’t – the obvious: universities are paid to teach.  They are paid specific amounts to do specific pieces of research

Read More »
January 19, 2015 5 Comments

Responsibility-Centred Budgeting

As I’m on the subject of finances and budgeting these days, I thought it a good time to bring up the topic of “responsibility-centred budgeting” (RCB).  It’s a timely topic, given both this ludicrous article in the Edmonton Journal last week, and the fact that I have one loyal reader who’s been urging me to write about it for months now (Hi, Alan!). Responsibility-centred budgeting basically says that units (usually faculties, occasionally departments) are responsible for raising their own funds and covering

Read More »
October 28, 2014 22 Comments

The Way Forward on Collective Bargaining

So, last week (here, here, and here) I noted that in most parts of the country, total compensation levels have been running more or less in line with changes to total operating grants.  But this is not a reason to become complacent about university finances and future collective bargaining agreements, for two reasons. First, what I’ve been showing is that salary mass has been increasing in line with operating income.  But salary mass and salaries are two different things.  If I give

Read More »
October 27, 2014 3 Comments

Scenario Planning for Ontario and Quebec

Yesterday, we looked at data from 2004 to 2012 to examine income and expenditure trends for Canadian universities, and found that salary and operating budgets were both moving up at a pace of around 4.4% per year in real dollars.  Today, I want to do a bit of scenario planning for the country’s two largest provinces using the same technique of focussing just on operating grants, tuition, and salaries.  Ontario Ontario sits in between two divergent trends – real public

Read More »
October 22, 2014 2 Comments

Operating Budgets

So, yesterday I said it was pretty easy to show what’s going on in university budgets just by looking at operating grants, tuition, and salaries – and so I thought, perhaps, I should practice what I preach.  So here goes: Between 2004-5 and 2012-13, operating grants from provincial governments rose from $8.27 billion to $10.9 billion (all figures inflation-adjusted, expressed in 2012 dollars), an average increase of 3.5% per year.  But this encompasses two very distinct periods.  Up until 2009-10, the rate

Read More »
October 21, 2014 3 Comments

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...