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Category: Government

Designing Student Aid Programs from Scratch (1)

Over the years, I have concluded that one of the reasons policy debate can be so stifling is we’re usually debating options within existing policy parameters: that is, “fixes” to existing policy.  It’s pretty rare that anyone talks about “greenfield” policies in areas where no policy ever existed.  This is kind of a shame, because it means people don’t really understand the process of trade-offs that go into original policy-making. So, just for fun, I am going to spend this week talking about

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December 2, 2019 2 Comments

PSE in Alberta – Part 1

With things in Ontario starting to calm down, Alberta is the next frontier in Canadian PSE changes.  The October budget asked institutions for some pretty significant mid-year adjustments, and if the already-published departmental business plan is anything to go by, it looks as though institutions are going to have to absorb several hundred million dollars more in cutbacks over the next couple of years.  How Alberta institutions react to this will be instructive, because they’ll be experiencing in fast-forward what

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November 28, 2019 No Comments

Beyond the Student Choice Initiative

Last Thursday, the Ontario Superior Court struck down the Ford Government’s “Student Choice Initiative”, a program of voluntary student-unionism (VSU) it imposed last January (see here for a refresher).  The court decision is here.  It’s a full defeat for the provincial government, the policy is declared void, but it’s unclear if and how student organizations will be compensated for lost revenue from the fall term. A lot of people are arguing this is a victory for student unions and for the cause of

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November 27, 2019 No Comments

Big News on Free Speech

Cast your mind back oh, about fifteen months, to the Dawn of a New Era on Ontario campuses.  One in which Speech Would Be Free.  The Ford Government was new and fresh and so was the ink on a proclamation requiring all Ontario institutions to adopt a policy on free speech, consistent with the University of Chicago Statement of Principles on Free Expression, by January 1, 2019. The government charged the Higher Education Quality Council of Ontario (HEQCO) with oversight of the

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November 6, 2019 2 Comments

Scandinavian Round-Up

Every once in awhile it’s useful to take a look at how things are developing in other parts of the world.  Today, a quick trip to the three Scandinavian countries.  Norway is by some distance the most affluent of the Scandinavian countries, thanks to a few bazillion barrels of offshore oil.  But as the price of oil tumbles, financial pressures are appearing.  A wave of institutional mergers – touted not as a cost-saving measure but as a means to strengthen institutions

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November 5, 2019 No Comments
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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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