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Category: Funding and Finances

Looking Forward to 2017-18

Last week we looked at likely paths for government funding in the big four provinces.  Today, I want to look at how that might translate into actual changes at institutions. The outlook for government funding, if you’ll recall, looks like this: Figure 1 – Nominal Non-Health Dollars Available by Province, indexed to 2013. But governments only account for about 54% of total revenue.  Students make up 39% and “other” makes up about 8%, so to look forward, one needs to look

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July 29, 2013 6 Comments

Go West

The key to understanding what post-secondary education is going to look like a few years down the road – say, 2017 – is to look at what is likely to happen to government funding.   We can’t know exactly what governments will spend on PSE, but we can know  how much money they are going to have available to spend simply by working out how much money each will likely have once health expenditures (which make up just 40% of the budget in

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July 23, 2013 1 Comment

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

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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