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Category: Funding and Finances

The Drummond Report

If you’re from Ontario, you’ll have had yesterday penciled into your calendars, like a trip to the dentist, for weeks. If you’re from outside Ontario, you’re likely at least dimly aware that Premier McGuinty punted the matter of long-term fiscal stabilization to Don Drummond, an ex-Ottawa mandarin, so that his ministers could take to the hustings last fall saying everything was under control when in fact this place is broke, broke, broke. Anyway, Drummond released his report yesterday and it’s

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February 16, 2012 1 Comment

Consensual Hallucinations

Imagine you’re running a Canadian university or college in 2008 or 2009. All signs point to a nasty recession, but your provincial government is still in spending mode and keeps giving you more money. It can’t last; the provincial deficit is completely unsustainable and cuts are inevitable within a couple of years. How should you use that extra money the finance minister just slipped you? Anyone with a modicum of financial sense would tell you to save it. Put it

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January 26, 2012 No Comments

You Couldn’t Make It Up

This email is G-rated, so I can’t use the full range of sexual/scatological imagery needed to describe my true feelings about the Ontario government’s Tuition Rebate announcement last week. I’ll keep it to: I told you so. To recap, the Ontario Liberals made a not-particularly sensible election promise to give a 30% rebate tuition to full-time dependent students. But at least it involved giving some new money to low-income students, even if it came at the cost of providing a

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January 9, 2012 9 Comments

Our 2012 Forecast

Hello, all. We’re back up and running at HESA Towers, and we’re starting the year with a list of things to look for in 2012. The #1 story of the year in Canadian higher education will almost certainly be labour unrest. The faculty strike that just ended at Brandon lasted a staggering 45 days while at McGill, the non-academic staff were on strike from September to early December. Unions appear to be getting bolshier while money is starting to become

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January 3, 2012 No Comments

Comparing Support for the Social Sciences and Humanities

After writing about SSHRC a couple of weeks ago one very loyal reader requested that I elaborate on the point that the social sciences and humanities are treated well in Canada compared to other countries. I’m a sucker for loyal readers, so: I’ll say straight off that that comparing national granting council budgets is tricky because there are some significant structural differences in the way research gets funded in different countries (i.e., not all funding goes through granting councils). When

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December 12, 2011 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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