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Category: Budgets

A New Landscape

Just a few quick thoughts on the federal budget (I’m skipping the gory details, but I do encourage you to read our team’s full budget summary, available here.) 1) When can we all publicly admit that the PMO has become the fourth granting council? This habit of handing out money to specific scientific projects outside the tri-council structure is becoming dangerously entrenched. Sure, I’m happy for McMaster and their new $6.5 million health outcomes project, but is it good public

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March 29, 2012 No Comments

The Ontario Budget

Well, I don’t think anyone quite expected that. The quick summary: faced with enormous structural deficits, the Ontario government chose to close the fiscal gap with delays in capital projects, some cross-government efficiency measures and – not to put too fine a point on it – sticking it to public sector workers. The upside is that as a result they managed to avoid program cuts in most areas, which to be honest is a bit of a miracle. If you

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March 28, 2012 No Comments

Final Thoughts on Academic Salaries

So what, if anything, can we conclude from all this salary data we’ve been looking at over the past three days? There are really three issues at play. The first has to do with average salaries – does it make sense that, on average, our professors are essentially the best paid in the world? Well, there’s no reason to begrudge paying top dollar for top talent. If Canadian professors were – collectively – considered to be the best in the

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January 13, 2012 4 Comments

Why Angela Merkel Matters to the University of Windsor

I was interested to see the coverage in the Windsor Star of President Alan Wildeman’s recent note to staff about the 2012-2013 budget. The Star focused on the gap between $12 million increase in new costs and the $6 million increase in revenue as a reason for a coming round of tuition hikes. To me, though, this misses the real story:  namely, crappy pension fund returns. Windsor, like many Ontario universities, is in a bit of a pickle about staff pensions.  The

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August 25, 2011 No 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.

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