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Category: Funding and Finances

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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May 10, 2021 1 Comment

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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May 5, 2021 4 Comments

Laurentian Blues (8) Causes, Fault, and Lessons

Good morning.  I had hoped to get you a bit more detail about what has happened at Laurentian in the last few days, but as usual there is less info available than there should be.  Here’s what we know: Late Monday, the university released a list of 69 programs that have been discontinued.  Most of them are programs which have fewer than 30 students (in some cases considerably fewer), and a lot of these programs are in humanities, which is not

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April 15, 2021 15 Comments

Laurentian Blues (7) – The Process

Last week, the Laurentian University Senate met in a bizarre closed-door session to approve a package of cuts, the details of which are still mostly unknown.  On the basis of this, quite a number of people received termination notices at Laurentian University yesterday.  I have not seen any definitive numbers on losses (the university, typical of its entire approach through this crisis, is being crap at communicating actual information), but I have seen estimates of anywhere between 80 and 110

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April 13, 2021 11 Comments

Laurentian Blues (6) – The Model

Most of what we know about the Laurentian affair suggests that it is sui generis, but some people insist on turning it into an exemplar of broader trend: not so much a “who’s next” as a “there but for the grace of God go all of us” (or, as a recent podcast had it: is Laurentian the “canary in the nickel mine”?).  Basically, this argument suggests that Laurentian is not really at fault, but rather a victim of “the Ontario

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March 8, 2021 4 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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