Category: Funding and Finances

The War on Small, Niche Public Universities

Governments love universities that make a niche for themselves.  “How delightful“, governments say.  “Oh, we’re so proud of you for not following the herd and trying to be just another big multi-versity.  You go, girl”. They say all of this, of course, until it comes time to actually fund them, at which point governments effectively flip small, niche universities the bird.  In practice, governments behave as though they hate small universities with a passion. There are two separate problems here.  The first has to do with the

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Cooling the “War on Science” Rhetoric

Today’s budget day.  I think we can be reasonably certain that no matter what comes up on the R&D front, somebody is going to trot out the meme that the Harper government is conducting a “War on Science”.  But this is, at best, a half-truth.  There is an enormous difference between the Harper government’s record of heeding scientific advice and its behaviour towards government scientists, on the one hand, and its record of funding academic science, on the other. Their

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Africa: A Wrong Turn in Higher Ed Policy

One of the policy fads sweeping Africa right now is the idea that all teaching staff should possess PhDs.  It’s now policy in Nigeria, and a number of other countries.  I’m not sure where this policy priority came from, but it’s a terrible idea, diverting resources away from where they’re most needed at a time when the system is straining under the weight of ever-growing demand. “Wait a minute”, I hear you say.  “Who can be against having more qualified

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The Salaries Problem

I’ve made a few key points over the last couple of days: 1)      Canadian Universities will be lucky if they keep being able to increase their incomes by 3% per year, holding enrolments constant. 2)      The kinds of salary settlements we have seen recently at Canadian universities, if allowed to continue, will eat up easily 70-80% of that income, maybe more, leaving precious little left over for IT, infrastructure, etc. 3)      It’s not a problem of administrative bloat.  The ratio of academic salaries

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How Universities Are Becoming More Labour-Intensive

Yesterday, I showed how universities in New Brunswick were – despite welcome new promises of stable funding from the provincial government – facing problems because salary increases were going to eat all the available new money.  Some of you possibly thought I was being alarmist.  But it’s easy enough to show how this can happen.  In Ontario, it already has. For data here, I pulled the financial statements for the last five years at the “Big 8” (Toronto, Waterloo, Western,

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