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Category: Funding and Finances

Free Harvard Fair Harvard

Harvard has a unique Governance structure.  Basically, it has two boards and no Senate.  One of the two boards – the Board of Overseers – is composed entirely of Harvard alumni.  It has thirty members and the membership turns over a bit each year with annual elections.  This year’s annual election is a bit of a doozy. Back in January, an alumni and businessman by the name of Ron Unz submitted a slate of candidates – which included consumer activist

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April 29, 2016 No Comments

Comparing Per-Student University Expenditures by Category (2)

This is part 2 of a two-parter on how Canadian universities spend their money.  All the stuff about what data I’m using, caveats thereto, etc., are available in yesterday’s post.  If you missed yesterday, go catch up here. First, two small mea culpas from yesterday.  First, due to a cut/paste error, part of the data on student services that went out yesterday was slightly off, but has now been corrected on the website.  Second, I neglected to mention that the

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April 27, 2016 1 Comment

Comparing Per-Student University Expenditures by Category (1)

Just for giggles the other day, I took a look at Canadian university expenditures in 2013-14 using (as usual) the CAUBO/Statscan Financial Information of Universities and Colleges Survey.  I looked at operating expenditures by category.  Then I normalized them per FTE student.  And I got some very weird results which I thought I would share with y’all. What I am going to do in this series is show you the results for the main categories of expenditure which are “non-academic”. 

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April 26, 2016 4 Comments

Harvard. I Mean, Really.

Last week, the Harvard Crimson printed some unofficial estimates on the university’s current capital campaign.  Be forewarned: these numbers will give many of you a heart attack, so to soften the impact I’m going to lead  by providing some background on the campaign.  Universities raise money.  Sometimes it’s small donations, sometimes it’s big ones.  Sometime the university spends that money right away, sometimes the money goes into an endowment, which means the capital is available in perpetuity and the university

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April 21, 2016 1 Comment

The Politics of Unfreezing Tuition

Freezing tuition is a terrible policy.  Free tuition is actually a better idea.  At least it’s based on a particular theory of access and public expenditure.  A tuition freeze is just a decision not to take any more decisions.  It’s a recipe for drift. And what’s worse, the longer you let policy drift, the harder it is to stop drifting.  Case in point: Newfoundland. To recap: In 2000, the province of Newfoundland decided to reduce tuition by 5% a year

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April 20, 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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