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Category: Funding and Finances

More Money Than You Think

If there’s one thing everyone knows, it’s that Canadian universities have had a hard time of it during the recession during the last few years, yes?  Absolutely starved for income because of government cutbacks, etc etc. Not so fast.  Check out this data on university operating budgets from the CAUBO/StatsCan financial survey: Figure 1: Indexed growth in University Operating Budgets 2007-08 to 2011-12 That’s right – across the country, university budgets went up by 28% between 2007-08 and 2011-12.  That’s

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July 15, 2013 3 Comments

The Size and Purpose of Government

Ever wonder why it seems like higher education is always in a financial trouble?  One big reason can be found in Agatha Christie’s autobiography.  Reflecting on her station in life as a young woman early last century, she noted in her memoirs how she never thought she would ever be wealthy enough to own a car – nor ever so poor that she wouldn’t have servants.  In today’s world, of course, this makes no sense at all, since almost everyone

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July 8, 2013 No Comments

One Thought to Start Your 147th Year, Canada

Some of you have noted that I am a little hard on this country of ours and its higher education system(s).  That’s a fair comment: the sense of complacency around our education system and its alleged virtues does indeed drive me absolutely mental most days and I have no qualms venting about it.  (Note to our international readers: the most important thing to know about Canada is that our national dress is fleece.  Because comfort trumps pretty much everything else. 

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July 2, 2013 No Comments

A Dreadful Argument About Tuition Fees

I see that the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives has just released a new paper by Hugh MacKenzie called The Impact of Taxation on the Higher Education Debates. It’s worth a read because it sets out the argument against higher fees in the most respectable terms possible – certainly more respectable that anything student groups themselves have come up with. It is still, however, a pretty crap argument. The spiel runs like this: the lazy talking point about how higher

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June 17, 2013 1 Comment

Projections From Queen’s Park

Professionally, I am a killjoy.  Most of my job involves explaining why education funding is not going to go back to the good times of the eighties any time soon.  How bad things are going to get differs from place to place, and today I want to show you why I think there’s big trouble still ahead in Ontario. Let’s start with the fact that government expenditures have risen sharply in recent years, as shown in figure 1.  The Liberals

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June 12, 2013 No Comments

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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