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Category: Canada

How to Fund (2)

As I noted yesterday, in Canada we have some kind of phobia about output-based funding.  In the 1990s, Ontario and Alberta introduced, and then later killed, key performance indicators with funding attached.  Quebec used to pay some money out to institutions based on the number of degrees awarded, not just students enrolled, but they killed that a few years ago too (I’m sure the rumour that it did so because McGill did particularly well on that metric is totally unfounded).

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February 15, 2017 4 Comments

How to Fund (1)

Over the next three days, I want to talk about funding formulas.  I know I did this a couple of years ago, at the start of the Ontario funding formula review exercise (see here, here, and here, but it’s worth revisiting  partly because I’m cheesed off at how Ontario managed to botch the review, but also, it’s because I’ve been looking at funding formulas in Europe and the US for article I’ve been writing, and it’s absolutely stunning to me how

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February 14, 2017 No Comments

Skills and Youth

What with the Advisory Council on Growth’s paper on skills, and the Expert Panel on Youth Employment wrapping up, public policy is suddenly back to a focus on skills – and in particular what skills youth should have.  So, let’s talk about that. While some in the federal government will state forcefully that they are not – repeat NOT- going to be like the previous government and tell students what fields they should study (read: welding), literally every time skills

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February 9, 2017 3 Comments

Innovation and Skills Redux

So, yesterday Federal Finance Minister Bill Morneau’s Advisory Council on Economic Growth released five (!) papers on innovation, skills, and a bunch of other things.  I’m sure there’s a lot of ink on these in today’s papers, mainly around proposals to raise the retirement age (which we actually did two years ago, except the Trudeau government reversed it, but now evidence-based policy FTW, as the kids say).  I’ll restrict myself to some brief thoughts about two areas in particular: innovation and skills

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February 7, 2017 1 Comment

“Xenophobia”

Here’s a new one: the Canadian Federation of Students has decided, apparently, that charging international students higher tuition fees is “xenophobic”.  No, really, they have.  This is possibly the dumbest idea in Canadian higher education since the one about OSAP “profiting” from students.   But as we’ve seen all too often in the past year or two, stupidity is no barrier to popularity where political ideas are concerned.  So: let’s get down to debunking this. The point that CFS – and

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February 6, 2017 1 Comment
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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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