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Category: Funding and Finances

The Bill is Coming Due

Though there are ups and downs and local variations, over the past decade, three factors characterize the finances of the Canadian higher education sector. That’s it, that’s the whole story.    It’s a classic triangle: if one side increases in length and another one does not move, the entirety of the accommodation lies on the third side of the triangle. Now, to be fair, at the system-level this dynamic seems to work.  On average, the system is chugging along reasonably, with

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May 9, 2023 2 Comments

Provincial Budgets 2023-24

Morning, all.  It’s time for our annual provincial budget round-up.  University Affairs has done its round-up of budget announcements; I’m here to put the whole set of financial commitments under the lens and give it some long-term context. A couple of caveats before I start. First, PEI is not included, for the simple reason that the government chose not to submit a budget before going to the polls a couple of weeks ago.  But, in the big fiscal picture of

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April 19, 2023 2 Comments

Final Thoughts on Historical Higher Ed Finances

After three blog posts looking at historical data on financing (see here, here and here), I thought I should do one final one which tries to tease out some lessons.  Let’s focus on what I think are the key graphs from yesterday: Figure 1: Total Institutional Income per FTE Student by Source, Canadian Universities, 1962-63 to 2020-21, in constant $2022 Figure 2: Total Institutional Income per Full-Time Student by Source, Canadian Colleges, 1976-77 to 2020-21, in constant $2022 Figure 3:

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April 18, 2023 2 Comments

Historical Higher Education Data-Palooza Part 3

So it seems a lot of you were pretty interested in last week’s data fest and in particular this graph (of which I am inordinately proud, ‘cos damn it took some work). Figure 1: Total Government Transfers to Institutions by Source and Type, Canada, 1955-56 to 2020-21, in millions of $2022. The big story here is that institutional income in post-secondary education has grown much faster from 1999 onwards than it did at any time in the preceding 30 years. 

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April 17, 2023 1 Comment

Historical Higher Ed Data-Palooza Part 2

Today’s discussion might be a little less exciting than yesterday because although I now have all this cool data on finances going back to 1920, holy hell are there some difficulties coming up with way to provide a unified data series through that period.  So, apologies, but you’re in for some long parenthetical statements on methodology. The main reason I was looking for historical data in the first place was that I was trying to resolve a long-standing puzzle around

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April 12, 2023 3 Comments
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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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