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Category: Funding and Finances

Coronavirus (6) – Postcorona

Morning all.  Coronavirus again today, but I think my coverage of it is going to slow down.  The situation is settling down a bit and it doesn’t look like we are going to have avalanches of new decisions or anything to analyse.  If you want to follow the various states of institutional closure (who still has cafeteria service, which ones have travel restrictions, etc., keep checking in with Ken Steele, who seems to have this covered reasonably comprehensively.  But I suspect

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March 19, 2020 2 Comments

A Tale of Two Budgets

The first two big provincial budgets of the year came from British Columbia and Alberta and they could not have been more different. To start out in Victoria, the folks in BC had a nice, tidy, almost do-nothing budget.  Grants to institutions rose by 1% – that is, slightly less than inflation – while spending on student aid rose by nearly 23%.  Some but not all of that money went to a new “BC Access Grant” which got trumpeted all over the

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March 11, 2020 2 Comments

The Shifting Cost-base of Ontario’s Higher Education System

Today, I want to talk about a massive shift in the higher education cost base that has gone largely unremarked but had huge implications for institutions across the country. Let’s start by looking at Ontario undergraduate application statistics for 2020, the preliminary version of which came out a couple of weeks ago.  Figure 1 shows very little change from last year in terms of the big four application areas.  STEM is down a tad, but nothing to write home about

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February 10, 2020 1 Comment

Counter-intuitive Faculty Salary Data

I haven’t taken a good look at faculty salary data in about three years, so it seems about time to catch up on what’s going on out there.  Let’s jump right in. Here’s the big headline: for the first time in about two decades, average faculty salaries are declining in real terms, albeit from quite high levels.  Among full professors and the faculty as a whole, the drop in inflation-adjusted salaries is about 3% since 2014-15; for associates and assistant

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February 4, 2020 2 Comments

Postcard from Alberta (2)

Yesterday, I discussed the peculiarities of Alberta’s financial reporting system for post-secondary education and how it reflects the province’s controlling approach towards post-secondary institutions (if you don’t believe me, ask anyone who’s been a senior admin at both an Albertan institution and one from another province, and see how often they get calls from Ministers and senior government officials).  Today, I want to talk about how that approach is likely to sabotage the governing United Conservative Party’s goals when it

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January 28, 2020 1 Comment

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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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