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Category: Budgets

Errata

Hi all. This is a bit embarrassing, but I need to come clean about something. I made a graph about federal government research expenditures back on budget night and have reused it several times since to make a point about anemic federal spending. The problem is, I goofed. Here is the graph, supposedly depicting federal spending on the tri-councils and the Canada Foundation for Innovation in millions real (that is, inflation-adjusted) $2023 dollars, including the increases in funding out to 2028-29

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November 13, 2024 2 Comments

The Memory Hole

It should come as a surprise to no one (at least no one who has not been sheltering under a rock for the past couple of years) that Canadian universities are in for a serious bout of belt tightening. Not everywhere, and not all to the same extent. But the math is pretty simple: the international tuition fee gravy train has come to a halt and no provincial government seems willing to replace this income, either through higher block grants

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September 11, 2024 2 Comments

Budgets, Trust, and POVs

It’s been an interesting couple of weeks for me. It’s end of term/conference season, and so I get a lot of requests to go around the country speaking to Boards, Senates, leadership groups, etc. And the most interesting parts of these discussions are the Q&As, particularly when the same theme crops up multiple times. And the bits that keep coming up are around budgeting. There’s an obvious reason why everyone is worried about budgeting. It’s because the sector is screwed.

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May 29, 2024 2 Comments

Budget Commentary 2024

Good (very early morning) all. Please find attached HESA’s Review of the 2024 Federal Budget. It’s a complicated budget with a lot of moving pieces, but the HESA Towers team did an amazing job last night in putting it all together for your enjoyment/edification. My take on this budget? Well, it is a difficult one to parse. There’s an effective cut to international student mobility. There’s an increase in funding to apprenticeships and First Nations’ students. This seems like a good trade. And

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April 16, 2024 1 Comment

Provincial Budgets, 2024-25

Morning, everyone. Yesterday, the government of Manitoba delivered its annual provincial budget, making it the tenth and final one to do so. That means I can do my annual analysis of provincial budgetary commitments! A couple of caveats before I start. First, there are several provinces that have changed the way they describe their post-secondary budget expenditures in their main estimates. The most important of these is in Quebec, where about a half-billion dollars in capital expenditures has disappeared from

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April 3, 2024 1 Comment

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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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