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Category: Funding and Finances

Fun With Library Statistics (Part 1)

The Canadian Association of Research Libraries (CARL) recently issued its annual statistical report.  I thought I’d take the opportunity over the next couple of days to take a look at a few interesting patterns in library practices and expenditures.  They shed some interesting light on the pressures Canadian academic libraries face right now. Some methodology here: CARL has 29 university members, from the very large U of T (almost 74,000 FTE students) to UNB (under 8,000 FTE students).  As a

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October 26, 2016 2 Comments

Athletics Scholarships in Canada

Time was, about twenty years ago, Canadian universities didn’t spend money on university athletic scholarships.  Then things changed and universities turned on the taps.  Today we ask the question: “how’s that going for everyone”? Well, it’s not going too badly, if you’re an athlete.  Just under 5,830 students received athletic scholarships totalling $15,981,189 in 2013-14 – that’s a little over $3,000 a pop.  CIS officially recognizes twenty-one sports, nine of which have teams for both genders (eighteen total), plus football

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September 30, 2016 5 Comments

Reforming Funding for First Nations Students

I see from this article by John Ivison of the National Post that the issue of funding for post-secondary education for First Nations is becoming a bit of a hot potato.  Time for us to take a look at the situation. I think most people now get that First Nations’ students don’t receive “free education”.  They pay tuition fees like everyone else.  What they do have (if they have “status”) is a parallel student aid system, which is called the

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September 26, 2016 No Comments

Social License and Tuition Fees

So, to Johannesburg, where South African Education Minister (and Communist Party chief) Blade Nzimande finally announced the government’s decision on tuition for next year. He was in a tricky place: students are still demanding free tuition (see my previous story on the Fees Must Fall movement here) and will not accept a hike in fees. Meanwhile, universities are quite rightly feeling very stretched (it’s tough trying to maintain developed-world caliber institutions on a tax base which is only partially of

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September 23, 2016 No Comments

OECD data says still no underfunding

The OECD’s annual datapalooza-tastic publication Education at a Glance was released yesterday.  The pdf is available for free here.  Let me take you through a couple of the highlights around Higher Education. For the following comparisons, I show Canada against the rest of the G7 (minus Italy because honestly, economically, who cares?), plus Australia because it’s practically our twin, Korea because it’s cool, Sweden because someone always asks about Scandinavia and the OECD average because hey that just makes sense. 

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September 16, 2016 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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