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Category: Funding and Finances

Cross-Subsidies

One of the most important but least-acknowledged subjects in higher education management and finance is internal cross-subsidies.  So today, I‘m going to demystify it, and then consider how higher education institutions can be more transparent about them. Let’s start with costs per student because that is a bit easier to understand.  Not every student in every class costs the same to educate.  Broadly speaking, for each course or course section, there is a labour cost and a materials cost.  Labour

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January 16, 2023 2 Comments

College Finances 2020-21

Let’s catch up on some new Statscan data on college finances during COVID.  The big headline can be seen in figure 1:  Total income for colleges dropped by 8.4% in real terms during 2020-21.  About 40% of that fall was due to inflation, the rest was an absolute drop in income.  But break it down by source of income, and you see something different: income from governments was down by 2%, income from student fees by 11%, and income from

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January 11, 2023 No Comments

University Finances 2021-22

Nearly all universities have posted their financial statements for 2021-22, so that means it’s time to look at how year two of COVID went for Canadian universities. Let’s define who is included in the sample.   Not all institutions have put out their 2021-22 financials including: Algoma University, the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design, Concordia University, Université Laval, Polytechnique, and the Université du Québec system, so these cannot be included.  I have also left out Mount Royal University and

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November 22, 2022 1 Comment

Laurentian (Part the Last)

I don’t know how many blogs I have written about Laurentian since February 1, 2021.  Probably a dozen or so.  But with the release last Thursday of the Ontario Auditor General’s final report into the whole affair, I think this is where we can close the book.  If you have been diligent enough to read all my posts – particularly this series from last January – my guess is that nothing in the AG’s report will surprise you all that

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November 21, 2022 2 Comments

The Affordability of Canadian Universities, 2020, Part 2

Ok, so I got a little bit too excited in yesterday’s blog, when I indicated I could show how the increase in student aid spending since 2006 has improved affordability.  I forgot that while I do have aggregate data on grant expenditures across the country, data on how this money is split by institutional type is pretty scarce.  The Canada and Quebec student aid programs do publish data like this, but for some reason neither government chooses to leave older

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November 9, 2022 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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