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Category: Canada

It Could Be Worse

Next term is going to be awful in pretty much every way imaginable.  But it could be worse.  Most obviously, it would be worse if a remote fall term is not a one-off.  It’s possible the virus will not be contained sufficiently for a resumption of face-to-face classes or international travel by January.  We could be looking at a full year of this, in which case i) many will wish they spent more time working on better online delivery over the summer, ii)

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May 28, 2020 1 Comment

Jobs

I mentioned a couple of weeks ago how the financial position of US universities during the pandemic was going to be absolutely shattered.  In the public sector, that’s because states can’t deficit finance and so a declining tax base translates directly into lower public revenues for institutions; in the private sector it’s because there’s a real question about whether any students are going to pay $40K+ for an online semester.  The Chronicle of Higher Education is keeping track of the layoffs at US

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May 21, 2020 3 Comments

The Outlook for International Students

Everyone is wondering: what’s going to happen to enrolments in the fall?  Particularly, international enrolments?  It’s a big question because for the last decade pretty much 100% of all the increase in institutional income has come from fee income, much of it from international students.  Take that income away, and we’re talking about major cuts: in Australia, which is only slightly more international fee-dependent than Canada, the hit to the sector this term is estimated at over $5 billion.  Some

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May 20, 2020 1 Comment

Better Together

So far in the pandemic, the fiscal picture in Canada looks like this: The federal government is splashing enormous amounts of cash through EI, CERB, CESB etc. to support individuals, and sustaining businesses through wage subsidies, rent subsidies, and cheap loans. Provincial governments have focussed mostly on meeting the front-line costs of the crises – such as costs in hospitals, long-term care centres – and on some boutique financial measures to help households (some extra money to seniors, breaks on

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May 4, 2020 No Comments

The Spring 2021 Election

Yesterday, we talked a little bit about what fiscal re-balancing between Ottawa and the provinces might look like after the pandemic, and I argued that on balance, the likeliest option was some type of uploading of responsibility for income support to the federal government.  But this might not be the only thing that changes after the pandemic: there are a lot of big, ambitious ideas out there about what a post-Corona Society looks like: lower carbon futures, expanded social security/protection futures

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April 29, 2020 No Comments
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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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