Category: Budgets

2013-14 Provincial Budget Analysis

The last of the provincial budgets was delivered last week, so it’s time for a quick analysis of spending on operating funding for universities and colleges. Some important caveats on this data: Budgets often have only a vague relationship with what actually gets spent.  Last year in Quebec, for instance, what eventually got allocated to institutions was a good $120 million less than what was budgeted.  So numbers for 2013-14 need to be viewed as provisional.  And to be consistent,

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Some Perspective on those Alberta PSE Cuts

So, everyone seems to be getting very upset about the Government of Alberta having cut budgets by 7%.  Of course, cuts are always very painful, but I think it’s worth stopping to consider the government’s perspective on this issue, which I think boils down to this specific graph: Figure 1: Provincial Government Expenditures per FTE Student, Selected Provinces               (Since I know some of you will ask: Data is StatsCan, drawn from the 2012-13

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Lines in a Budget

We hope you liked our review of the 2013 Federal Budget.  Just to round off last week’s commetary on the all things budgetary, I thought I’d offer a few thoughts on the dangers of coming to snap conclusions about government policy from a budget document. Obviously, there’s the problem of time.  It’s tough to try to get everything together, in a nice tight package, in the space of three or four hours; unlike the dudes who do news coverage for

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HESA’s 2013 Federal Budget Commentary

On Thursday afternoon, Finance Minister, Jim Flaherty, stood on the floor of the House of Commons, and delivered the Government’s eighth Federal Budget.  In lieu of an OTTSD for Friday, we at HESA have examined the document, and produced a commentary on its implications for higher education in Canada. You can read our 2013 Federal Budget Commentary, here. Thanks for reading.  And as always, let us know what you think.  

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A Dream Budget

Today is budget day in Ottawa.  Tonight, you’ll get our full budget coverage (replacing tomorrow’s morning blog), and if you’re of the twitter persuasion, you can follow my analysis from 4PM, on, at @AlexUsherHESA.  But for now, let’s think about what a good Canadian federal budget would look like for higher education. In keeping with the times, this will be a completely cost-neutral budget.  We’ll start with some obvious places to cut: the elimination of the education amount and textbook

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