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Category: Funding and Finances

Cape Breton, You Have to be Kidding Me

Faithful readers may remember my blog last year about Cape Breton University and how it doubled its international enrolment in one year, making an absolutely ludicrous amount of money in the process.  As a result of this phenomenal little piece of entrepreneurialism, Cape Breton has suddenly become hip in higher education circles, because the whole idea of anyone flooding into Sydney, Nova Scotia, let alone young people from halfway around the globe, is pretty astonishing to Sydneysiders as much as anyone else.  Whatever they’re

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October 17, 2019 2 Comments

Developments in Ontario’s Performance-Based Financing System

Good morning all. Today, the CD Howe Institute is releasing a paper I wrote on Performance-Based Financing (PBF) called Funding for Results in Higher Education. It’s a quick tour through the various ways that performance-based financing works around the world—in France, Germany, Scandinavia, as well as the United States—as well as some analysis of what we know of the PBF scheme that Ontario is theoretically implementing over the next couple of years. (NB: The Ministry of Training, Colleges and Universities

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September 17, 2019 No Comments

Canadian University Expenses, 2017-18

Good morning.  Yesterday, I examined recent trends in income at Canadian universities; today I want to take a look at what is happening on the expenditures side. Let’s start by looking at expenditures by type.  Universities are labour-intensive places, with 58% of total expenditures devoted to labour of one sort or another (if we were to look just at operating expenditures, it would be higher).  About 12% goes into new buildings, building renovations, utilities and general upkeep.  Nine percent is

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September 13, 2019 2 Comments

Canadian University Finances 2017-18

So, the 2017-2018 Financial Information of Universities and Colleges survey dropped in July, and as usual I’ve got a two-parter, one on income and balances (today) and one on expenditures (tomorrow). Figure 1 shows the big, long-term picture. University income, in real dollars, is still on an enormous long-term up-tick. This year, total income was $38.7 billion, down very slightly this year from last because it wasn’t quite as bumper a year on the investment/endowment front. Figure 1: University Income

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September 12, 2019 No Comments

Education at a Glance, 2019: The Key Data

It’s that time of year when literally everyone is releasing data and reports for the back-to-school period (SELF-PROMOTION KLAXON: look for my new paper on Performance-Based Funding of post-secondary education, out from the CD Howe Institute Tuesday next week). Over the next couple of days, we’ll be doing a deep dive on Canadian university finances; today, though, I wanted to go through some of the highlights of this year’s Education at a Glance from the OECD, which dropped yesterday morning

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September 11, 2019 4 Comments

One Thought to Start Your Day

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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