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Category: Canada

The Throne Speech and Why We’re in Deep Trouble

Last week, the Governor-General delivered the Speech From the Throne (SFT). I argue it is a very ominous document for post-secondary education.  Since March, the Government of Canada has spent about $250 billion on various types of direct and indirect support for Canadians.  Very roughly, a third of that went to the Canada Emergency Response Benefit (CERB), other third went to the Canada Emergency Wage Subsidy (CEWS), and the balance went through three or four dozen targeted programs, among the largest of which

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September 30, 2020 No Comments

What do Strategic Plans Actually Say?

Today’s post is co-authored by Alex Usher and Michael Savage Yesterday’s blog focused on the structure of strategic plans, asking whether they are built from the mission statement backwards or from upwards from a checklist of ideas people had without looking at the overall picture?  (answer: for the most part they are built from checklists and hence are not particularly strategic, though they as planning documents they may work perfectly fine).  Today we’re going to dig into the substance of

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September 29, 2020 5 Comments

The State of Postsecondary Education in Canada, 2020

Our annual publication, The State of Postsecondary Education in Canada, is out today.  You can read it here.  Consider it your free annual almanac of everything PSE-related in Canada.  If you have any suggestions for improvement in future years, please let me know. This is an odd year to be writing almanac-like documents.  Normally, you can look forward to future events by relying on data that are a couple of years old.  Partly, it’s from necessity, thanks to Canada’s lackadaisical

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September 16, 2020 2 Comments

New Brunswick Election 2020

Next Monday, New Brunswick will go to the polls in the first of two likely provincial elections in this academic year (Saskatchewan looks set for October; BC could conceivably go early in the new year, but could also go the full four years and vote in fall 2021).  So, let’s take a look at what the parties are saying. Let’s start with the People’s Alliance, which is basically the old Confederation of Regions why-do-the-frenchies-get-so-much-attention coalition with a little bit of Ross

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September 10, 2020 No Comments

New Student Aid Data

Canada is – to put it mildly – flat-out terrible at releasing student aid data.  How many loans are issued?  How many grants?  In what amounts?  These rather basic facts are unknowable from the public record.  The government of Canada publishes statistics on the Canada Student Loans Program, which is good except that a) that’s only about 40% of the system and b) the most recent publication is from – and I wish I were kidding about this – 2016-17. 

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September 2, 2020 1 Comment

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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