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Category: Canada

Budget 2019 Commentary

Good morning all. Here’s your 2019 Budget Commentary ready for your review, brought to you through a globe-spanning collaboration between the team at HESA Towers and your humble correspondent pulling an all-nighter in the Arbat. We hope you enjoy it. As has usually been the case with budgets in this government, Budget 2019 is largely friendly to PSE with mostly good intentions but often only half-thought through ideas on implementation. Let’s start with the unambiguously good investments; namely, those for Indigenous

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March 20, 2019 1 Comment

What to Look for in Tonight’s Budget

At 4 PM EST, Finance Minister Bill Morneau will rise in the House of Commons to deliver his fourth budget, and the last one before a federal election in the fall.  What can we expect from the budget on the big PSE-files?  Here’s a quick rundown. Transfer Payments: Status quo. Research: My guess is that there are small goodies in this budget, if only to give them an excuse to reprint everything they did last year in this year’s budget

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March 19, 2019 No Comments

Strange, Inconsistent Arguments for Free Tuition

Every few weeks, it seems, someone shows up on twitter just aching to serve me some dubious justification for free tuition.   Let me recount two recent favourites. The first is the “oh but progressive taxation argument”.  It goes like this: Me: “You know universal subsidies for higher education are regressive, right?  On account of how the take-up rate for higher education – the likelihood of attending, the length of attendance, etc. – is positively correlated with family socio-economic status”?  (check back to

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March 12, 2019 3 Comments

“Consulting and Advising”, Ottawa-style

I received a note from someone in a federal ministry in Ottawa a couple of weeks ago.  It asked, would I be interested in having dinner with Minister (name withheld)?  You know, look into new policy initiatives, want to talk to a few experts, break bread together etc.  Sounds like fun, I said.  But you know that, for my sins, I live in Toronto, right?  Not Ottawa. Would this dinner invitation come with an airline ticket attached, or was I

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February 26, 2019 1 Comment

Advice for Young Student Politicians

At most Canadian universities, student election season is about to start.  So, today, a quick note for anyone out there thinking about joining the ranks of student representatives.  First, if you’re in Ontario, you need to know there’s no guarantee at all about what kind of organization you might be heading.  No one knows how the fee opt-out (opt-in?) system will work and what effects it will have on union finances.  Few student unions have reserves for more than a couple of

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January 31, 2019 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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