Category: Government

Institutional Economic Impact Statements: The Basics

For all sorts of reasons, higher education institutions find the need to “show value”.  One of the ways they do this is through economic impact statements.  My HESA Towers colleague Michael Savage has been doing a review of these across Canada and in a couple of other countries and has come up with a really simple framework for thinking about them. Today and tomorrow we’ll be taking an in-depth look at what these documents can and cannot actually explain. Ready? 

Read More »

How’s the Alberta PSE Re-Think Going? (Part 2)

Yesterday, I discussed the mechanics of the Alberta 2030 report that McKinsey is producing.  Today, I want to talk about where the review seems to be heading.  One kind soul provided me with a briefing paper of a recent roundtable which highlights “Emerging Goals” that are coming out of the exercise.  Allow me to summarize: The document suggests four “big goals” (Improve Access & Strengthen the Student Experience, Develop Skills for Jobs, Strengthen Innovation and Commercialization, Improve Internationalization) and two “enablers”

Read More »

How’s the Alberta PSE Re-Think Going? (Part 1)

You may remember that in the Spring, that Government of Alberta signed a contract with McKinsey to conduct a big review of Post-Secondary Education in the province.  I want to check in on how that’s going.  Today, I’ll look at the process; tomorrow I’ll look at what conclusions the government (or McKinsey – it’s hard to tell) is coming to.  Ready?  Then I’ll begin. Based on the Request for Proposals the province released back at the start of this process in March

Read More »

Canada Christian College

There has been some brouhaha in Ontario about Canada Christian College (CCC), an evangelical school in Whitby, being given the title “university” and being “allowed to offer degrees”.  There is both less and more to this story than meets the eye.  Allow me to walk you through it. Let’s start at the beginning: when does a university become a university and who gets to grant degrees in Ontario?  Well, until 2000, you needed an Act of the Legislature.  CCC received

Read More »

Saskatchewan/ BC Manifesto Double-Header

Y’all know I usually do a full blog on manifestos for every provincial election.  And we have two of those coming up – BC on Saturday and Saskatchewan on Monday – so it seemed natural to publish these two today and tomorrow.  But for reasons which will shortly become apparent, I decided to combine them into one.  Both elections speak to bigger issues at play that need attention. Let’s start in Saskatchewan, where the right-of-centre Saskatchewan Party (SP) looks poised

Read More »