Category: Canada

Counter-intuitive Faculty Salary Data

I haven’t taken a good look at faculty salary data in about three years, so it seems about time to catch up on what’s going on out there.  Let’s jump right in. Here’s the big headline: for the first time in about two decades, average faculty salaries are declining in real terms, albeit from quite high levels.  Among full professors and the faculty as a whole, the drop in inflation-adjusted salaries is about 3% since 2014-15; for associates and assistant

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Postcard from Alberta (2)

Yesterday, I discussed the peculiarities of Alberta’s financial reporting system for post-secondary education and how it reflects the province’s controlling approach towards post-secondary institutions (if you don’t believe me, ask anyone who’s been a senior admin at both an Albertan institution and one from another province, and see how often they get calls from Ministers and senior government officials).  Today, I want to talk about how that approach is likely to sabotage the governing United Conservative Party’s goals when it

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That New Alberta Performance Funding Scheme

On Monday, the Alberta Government released some details about the Performance-Based Funding (PBF) scheme it wants to implement for next year.  Herewith, the lowdown. The Good News: It’s a performance-based funding scheme, which leapfrogs Alberta about two stages ahead of where it currently is in terms of funding planning (it is currently one of the largest jurisdictions in the world with no funding formula at all).  And it avoided copying the more bone-headed indicators that Ontario chose to use (for details

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Black Wednesday

At 6:12 AM last Wednesday morning at Tehran’s Imam Khomeini International Airport, Ukrainian International Airways Flight 752 (PS752) trundled down the runway for take-off on its scheduled flight to Kyiv.  The flight, with 176 souls aboard, carried roughly 60 Canadian citizens (source counts vary), as well as another 82 Iranians and 24 others, including the plane’s crew who were all Ukrainian.  At least 130 of the passengers were connecting in Kyiv to another flight destined for Toronto and from there

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Final Friday

Okay folks, time for me to sign off for the year. Two housekeeping notes.  First, blog service will resume bright and early on January 6th.  Second, this will be my last-ever Friday blog.  Many of you have over the years asked how I manage to put out this blog every day.  The answer is that it is getting difficult for me to balance this with the growth of our business (it has been quite a good year at HESA Towers),

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