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Category: Funding and Finances

Hiring Decisions

One of the more thoughtful replies I received to my piece on CAUT’s politicization of university accounting pointed out that one of the reasons people didn’t trust university accounting was because they made seemingly incomprehensible decisions with respect to hiring.  How was it, my reader asked, that there was plenty of money to hire sessionals but never money to hire full-time, permanent faculty?  Isn’t that money fungible?  Why spend on one and not the other? I can see why this might

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January 31, 2017 4 Comments

A Slice of Canadian Higher Education History

There are a few gems scattered through Statistics Canada’s archives. Digging around their site the other day, I came across a fantastic trove of documents published by the Dominion Bureau of Statistics (as StatsCan used to be called) called Higher Education in Canada. The earliest number in this series dates from 1938, and is available here. I urge you to read the whole thing, because it’s a hoot. But let me just focus in on a couple of points in

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January 27, 2017 4 Comments

The Politicization of University Accounting

Back in the fall, the Canadian Alliance of University Teachers (CAUT) published an interesting little guidebook called CAUT’s Guide to Analyzing University & College Financial Statements, written by Cameron and Janet Morrill, two profs at the University of Manitoba’s Asper School of Business.  Stripped to its essentials, it purports to be a DIY guide for faculty to help hold their institutions to account over finances. Nothing wrong with that.  Learning how to read financial statements is a good thing.  The

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January 10, 2017 1 Comment

More on International Fees in Canadian Universities

Due to a few unexpected issues yesterday, we had to postpone the One Thought. With no further ado, here it is: The day before yesterday we looked at what universities in different parts of the country are charging in terms of international tuition fees.  Here’s a quick graph to refresh your memory: Figure 1: International Undergraduate Tuition Fees, by Province, Canada, 2016-17 Figure 2 shows the same data but with a different Y axis.  Instead of showing the figure in dollars, let’s

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December 14, 2016 2 Comments

Does Student Debt Matter If You’re Not Going to Pay It Back?

You can accumulate one hell of a lot of debt these days in the UK.  Just in an undergraduate degree, fees are ‎£9,000 per year plus you can get another ‎£10,702 in maintenance loans per year of you’re studying in London.  Over a three-year degree that’s ‎£59,106 or a tad over $100,000 (yes, really). So, at face value one can understand the spate of stories coming out of the UK these days talking about how their massive debt loads are

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December 9, 2016 1 Comment

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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