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Category: Funding and Finances

Three

Just before Christmas, an interesting blog post appeared on the Canadian conservative website The Hub. It was by Mitch Davidson, late of the Ford Administration in Queen’s Park, and his subject was the topic of three-year bachelor’s degrees. Davidson is pro-, and he advances some fairly spectacular claims on behalf of such credentials. Just look at the headline: How Switching to three-year post-secondary degrees could kickstart the Canadian economy, or the claim later down in the paper that “widespread adoption

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January 12, 2026 3 Comments

The Small-Tent Path to Disaster

Morning all. Back to the grind. One of the surprising things I discovered over the break was that the Canadian Association of University Teachers (CAUT) seems to think that the sector is in good enough shape that it can afford to apply purity tests to external support. See specifically the article in the last CAUT Bulletin by the University of Regina’s Marc Spooner entitled Not All Calls for Public Funding are Good. Spooner’s ire is directed at the Royal Bank

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January 5, 2026 No Comments

Funding, Free Riding, and the Future of Canadian Science

Ever since World War II science — that is, state funded science — and economic progress have been seen to go hand in hand. And for the most part, governments have been happy to let scientists themselves decide where much of the money goes. But things have been changing lately, and not just in the United States, where the Trump administration has awarded itself the right to involve itself in any science award for any reason. Several countries, notably Australia

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November 27, 2025 1 Comment

Profit, Education, and Student Grants

One of the less-noticed measures in the November 4 budget had to do with restrictions on student loans. Specifically, it was about banning students attending for-profit institutions from accessing grants provided by the Canada Student Financial Assistance Program (CSFAP). Today, I want to examine the rationale behind this move and its likely effects. But first, some history. CSFAP did not always have a big investment in grants. In fact, it had none at all for the first thirty years of its

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November 18, 2025 1 Comment

Does England’s Newest Higher Education White Paper Actually Change Anything?

Last year, the Labour Party in the United Kingdom faced a dilemma. They needed to get elected, and to do that, they needed people to vote for them. Nothing wrong with that, except in higher education the UK faces a dilemma. Everyone knows the system’s in shambles. Everyone knows it will require painful choices to fix. But nobody wants to pay for it. It’s hard to cut that kind of Gordian knot without annoying people, and that interfered with the

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November 6, 2025 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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