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Category: Government

History of Canadian PSE Part V (to 1993)

The economic and fiscal history of Canada from the early 70s to the mid-90s is one long, bad disaster movie (the Cassandra Crossing, say).  Unemployment went over 6% in 1974 and didn’t come back down to that level until 2008.  For nearly all of the 1980s, it was over 8% and from 1982 to 1994 it was over 10% half the time.  The Keynesian medicine that was supposed to get us out of such messes simply did not work because

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October 11, 2018 1 Comment

History of Canadian PSE Part IV (to 1974)

Morning all.  Since people seem to like these history pieces so much, I’ve decided to get us mostly caught up to the present day in one go.  Hope you enjoy! The period roughly from 1959 to the oil crisis of 1973-74 is rightly thought of as a Golden Age for higher education in Canada, much as it is in the United States.  Universities ballooned in size and gradually became more research-intensive.  A new class of institutions, community colleges, were added

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October 10, 2018 1 Comment

History of Canadian PSE Part III (to 1959)

During the war years, post-secondary education was essentially on hold.  But immediately afterwards, in the period from 1945-1960, there were some major developments.  The first was dealing with a major surge in enrolments due to returning veterans.  In 1944-45, full-time enrolment was 38,516, slightly below where it was in 1938.   Two years later, swollen by several cohorts of military veterans taking advantage of a post-war benefits program, it was 76,237.  By 1950 those numbers were starting to fall again –

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October 5, 2018 No Comments

New Brunswick Manifesto Analysis

Once upon a time, back when Frank McKenna’s was premier, New Brunswick was seen as something of a leader in Canadian public policy.  Balancing budgets, championing official languages, investing in telecommunications and the internet, creating jobs (even if a lot of them were in call centres) – New Brunswick was seen as having understood the nature of the Maritimes’ long-term challenges and moved decisively to address them. It has been awhile since anyone thought of New Brunswick as a policy

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September 24, 2018 No Comments

Memory Lane on Skills Shortages

Cast your mind back to 2012 or so.  The Conservative Party was in its sixth year of office, but just getting into the swing of a real majority.  The craziest thing we had to worry about in American politics was a 6-day outbreak of Santorum-mania.  Gagnam was in style.   And the one phrase on everyone’s lips was “skills shortage”. Under the Tories, “skills” was code for “trades” (as opposed to now under the Liberals when “skills” is code for “coding”). 

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September 18, 2018 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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