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Category: Funding and Finances

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

Federal Transfers to Institutions

The government of Canada has essentially four mechanisms for transferring money to post-secondary institutions. The first, as discussed yesterday, is the indirect means of transfers to provinces.  The second is through the research granting councils: the Canadian Institutes for Health Research (CIHR), the Natural Science and Engineering Research Council (NSERC) and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC); as of 2018, the Canada Foundation for Innovation (CFI), which disburses money for scientific infrastructure, is now considered the fourth granting

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November 7, 2018 No Comments

A Short History of Federal PSE Transfers

A couple of weeks ago, I noted that the Parliamentary Budget Office was suggesting that the time may soon be upon us where the federal government is asked to take up a bigger share of funding provincial programs such as education.  In the interests of thinking about where the sector may be headed, it’s worth a quick trip down memory lane to see where we’ve been, and why federal transfers ceased to be a major funding avenue for institutions. Transfers for PSE

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November 6, 2018 3 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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