Category: Funding and Finances

Student Debt Update 2021

Back in early July, the Canadian Undergraduate Survey Consortium (CUSC) released its triennial survey of graduating students.  As always, one of the most interesting things in there is the data on student debt, because it is one of the few good, up-to-date national snapshots that we have of the issue.  There are some limitations to the snapshot.  It doesn’t report out on a provincial basis, only a national one.  It doesn’t really include Quebec.  The sample in the survey is

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A Notable Set of Higher Education Reforms

Let’s say you live in one of those former socialist countries with a really old-fashioned higher education system.  Your universities are insular because they have almost no contact with the private sector.  Internally, they are managed by an academic oligarchy.  Externally, they report directly to a government– no Board of Governors, just a straight reporting relationship between the rector and a government minister.  And I don’t just mean an accountability relationship here – I mean the rector and every single

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Support > Illumination

Some things never change.  Specifically, the demands of the academic left in Canada.  Take, for instance, the “Education for All Campaign” which was launched in late January. A joint project of the Canadian Association of University Teachers (CAUT), the Canadian Federation of Students (CFS), the Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE), the Public Service Alliance of Canada (PSAC) and the National Union of Public and General Employees (NUPGE), the campaign produced this new report, which is not a new report in

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Newfoundland and Labrador’s Big Reset

Two Thursdays, two big reports out of St. John’s.  The first was a 355-page doorstopper on the post-secondary system; the second is the Report of the Premier’s Economy Team, snappily-titled The Big Reset, which broadly covers the province’s entire economy and government in a mere 342 pages.  I’m guessing this second report will have a bigger impact on the province’s post-secondary system, so it’s worth looking at what it says.  But first, a quick backgrounder on the province as a whole. Newfoundland

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Two Sets of Provincial Budgets

Most years, I do a spring round-up of provincial budgets as they relate to post-secondary education.  Last year was a wash-out because some budgets didn’t happen until the fall, but this year almost everyone has managed to bring one in more or less on time (the exception being Newfoundland and Labrador, where the budget was delayed by a rather needless election that managed to take about four months to complete).  So, today I am going to look at what has

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