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Category: Funding and Finances

The Warren Proposal

No doubt everyone has heard about the ginormous ($1.25 trillion) promise that Massachusetts Senator and Democratic Presidential hopeful Elizabeth Warren made around post-secondary education last week.  But I suspect more people heard/saw the heat and noise about the promise rather than the promise itself.  So, herewith, a quick rundown and analysis: So, the first thing to note is that technically the package contained several policies.  The two major ones are about making tuition free in public schools, and a massive

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April 30, 2019 1 Comment

Performance-Based Funding 101: The Algorithm

The biggest missing piece in the Ontario government’s proposed performance-funding system is any discussion of the algorithm by which data on various indicators gets turned into an actual allocation to institutions.  The lack of such a piece is what leads most observers to conclude that the government has no idea what it’s doing at the moment; however I am a glass-half-full kind of guy and take this as an opportunity to  start a discussion that might impact the government’s thinking

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April 25, 2019 No Comments

Performance-Based Funding 101: The Indicators

Ok guys, I’m going to take the rest of the week to nerd out about performance-based funding (PBF) indicators, since clearly this is all anyone here in Ontario is going to be talking about for the next few months.  I’m going to start with the issue of what indicators are going to be used—and fair warning: this is going to be long. (Reminder to readers: I actually do this stuff for a living.  If you think your institution needs help

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April 23, 2019 5 Comments

How to Avoid Sounding Misinformed About Performance-Based Funding

Judging from various commentary I’ve seen/heard over the last few days, I suspect we’re all about to hear quite a lot of nonsense about Ontario’s proposed new Performance-based Funding (PBF) system.  Some of this is a natural consequence of the Conservatives announcing a general policy without announcing any details, which allows people’s imaginations to run rampant (and where Conservatives and higher education are concerned, academics’ imaginations can get pretty wild).  So, let’s just go through a few basics about PBF

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April 15, 2019 No Comments

Income Share Agreements (Part 2)

Yesterday, I described Income Share Agreements (ISAs) as basically a version of Milton Friedman-like Human Capital Contracts, which are very much like privately administered graduate taxes.  The question we will answer today is: under what circumstances would a private ISA be preferable to a public student loan? Assuming both were equally available and equally subsidized, then in theory a student would be indifferent between the two.  But there are a few reasons why this is unlikely to be the case;

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March 5, 2019 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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