Let’s catch up on some new Statscan data on college finances during COVID. The big headline can be seen in figure 1: Total income for colleges dropped by 8.4% in real terms during 2020-21. About 40% of that fall was due to inflation, the rest was an absolute drop in income. But break it down by source of income, and you see something different: income from governments was down by 2%, income from student fees by 11%, and income from
All ten provinces have now issued their budgets, so it’s time for our annual look at how governments across the country are choosing to invest (or not) in higher education. Just a quick reminder about how I do this. What I measure is budget commitments – that is, what governments say they are going to spend year over year. This is not quite the same thing as what they actually spend – there are always small differences between what governments
Obviously, it’s ridiculously early to start thinking about next year’s budget, but there are several things happening between now and next spring which could end up making Budget 2023 a pretty critical one for post-secondary education in Canada. Here’s my thinking: – 2022-23 marks the final year of the Budget 2018 research funding package – that is, the response to the Naylor Report on fundamental research. For the past five years, the sector has been living off the planned increases which were baked into the
Hi all. Our budget commentary is now up and available here. This was a difficult budget to evaluate. By no stretch of the imagination can it be called an “education budget,” and some of it seems to have been thrown together; yet at the same time some of the changes seem quite profound. First, it must be said that there are areas where the Budget is most notable for what it did not do. It did not renew the Business Higher Education
One of the less-anticipated outcomes of the COVID pandemic is the return of inflation at levels not seen in nearly thirty years. It is not yet clear if this inflation is something transitory, or something more long-term. The supply-chain snarls of mid-2021 have been followed by inflationary spikes due to rising oil prices and now – with the invasion of Ukraine – major spikes in food prices world-wide. In theory, each of these things is a one-off. But as wages
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