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Category: Government

Funny Math in Alberta

Many of my Canadian readers will likely have read a piece that has been circulating on the internet from Kim Siever, a self-described leftist internet journalist from Lethbridge.  The headline says it all: UCP Government to Cut Post-Secondary Spending by $1.5 Billion; That Number Rises to $3.5 Billion if you Factor in Inflation and Population Growth.  You know how I am always on about Economic Impact Analyses always being forms of competitive counting? Methodologically speaking, this is worse. Ok, so here’s

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December 1, 2021 No Comments

Waiting for the Arbitrator

We are now on Day 23 of a strike at the University of Manitoba, where the two sides genuinely did not start all that far apart.  Binding arbitration looms.  How did it get to this point? To really understand what’s going on here, one must go back to 2016.  In that year, the University of Manitoba Faculty Association (UMFA) went on strike over a combination of governance and salary issues.  They ended up winning a good chunk of what they

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November 24, 2021 No Comments

Non-existent Preconditions for DARPA Success

The federal government is taking its sweet time being sworn in (apparently the GG is on holiday in Germany or something), so it’ll be another week or so before we get new ministers and new mandate letters.  These letters set ministers’ priorities in a more formal way than manifesto commitments.  My absolute dearest wish, when it comes to Science and Innovation, is that these letters should read “you should take our mandate commitments seriously but not literally”.  That is, the

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October 13, 2021 1 Comment

Fall 2021: Stop Fooling Around

On Tuesday, TV Ontario’s estimable COVID pundit John Michael McGrath – the one who back in February absolutely eviscerated the Ontario government with its own data on how the February re-opening was going to cause a third wave – wrote another wonderful piece on the subject.  But this one was not a pessimistic piece; rather it made a measured and sober case for optimism about this summer and, by implication, the fall.  I am going to quote the start of it because it is

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May 20, 2021 4 Comments

All Hands on Deck

Alberta wasn’t the only province to release a report on post-secondary education last Thursday.  Out in St. John’s, the three commissioners of the Independent Review of the Post-Secondary Education System in Newfoundland and Labrador finally, after much delay, published its report, pithily entitled All Hands on Deck.   Just to give you a rundown on the province before we get into the report: Newfoundland and Labrador has two multi-campus institutions, Memorial University of Newfoundland (MUN for short) and the College of the

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May 4, 2021 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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