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Category: Funding and Finances

That Ontario Tuition/OSAP Announcement

OK, so the Ontario government rolled out its tuition/OSAP announcement and it’s big enough I should probably cover it, so apologies if you were looking forward to the second part about millennials – I’ll pick that up next week. The Government backgrounder is here, but in brief here’s what was announced: 1)      As widely leaked earlier this week, universities and colleges have been told to reduce tuition by 10% in every program for which they receive public subsidies.  This does not apply

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January 18, 2019 7 Comments

Ontario: Best-case/Worst-case Scenarios

You may have heard that there is a Conservative government in Ontario.  You may also have heard that it is, shall we say, keen on reducing government expenditures.  Further, you are aware that a provincial budget is traditionally delivered sometime between February and May.  So, naturally, you are asking yourself: what might the new government’s budget mean for post-secondary education?  What are the best-case and worst-case scenarios? I can’t claim much here in the way of inside information.  There are

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January 15, 2019 No Comments

College Finance Data, 2016-17

A few months ago, I promised you all an update on college finances when Statscan finally got around to updating its FINCOL tables.  Well, that day is here. Unlike universities, which have seen their budgets grow in real terms by about 25% over the last decade, growth in college budgets has been a lot slower – only about 14% – and nearly all that growth has come from student fees, since government support has been essentially flat.  In total, college

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January 14, 2019 No Comments

The Balance of Federal-Provincial Expenditures

Today, I am going to try to pull all this data together to see to what extent federal and provincial shares of expenditure in PSE have changed over time. As far as institutional expenditures go, the presence of federal indirect transfers complicates a good historical look at the question.  Up until 1976, it’s possible to look directly at cash and tax transfers specifically designated for PSE, and it is possible again after 2007-08 when the Harper Government carved out a

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November 9, 2018 No Comments

Federal Expenditures on Students

Over the last couple of days, we’ve looked at federal transfers to institutions.  Today I want to look at federal transfers to students, which are Kind Of a Big Deal. It seems kind of hard to imagine today, but just over twenty years ago, the feds couldn’t wait to get out of the field.  In 1994, Liberal Human Resources Minister (and later U of Winnipeg President) Lloyd Axworthy tried to get a “win” on student aid by – and I

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November 8, 2018 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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