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Category: Government

That International Education Report

The Federal Task Force on International Education reported last week. It was… how to put this? Very Canadian. In essence, the report reads as though the goal of keeping all major stakeholders sweet trumped the goal of providing clear, bold thinking about Canada’s internationalization strategy. It’s worthy without challenging any conventional thinking. It puts forward an ambitious goal without spending much time working out the details of getting it done (the phrase “stakeholders should co-ordinate” does too much work in this

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August 20, 2012 1 Comment

Those Statscan Cutbacks

Many will have seen news yesterday about large cutbacks in the works at Statistics Canada. On the basis of the news that lots of PSAC members had received notices that their jobs may be “affected,” a number of pro-Statscan commentators rushed to say that the agency needed to be saved because it provided such fantastic, non-partisan analysis. Well, yes. But yesterday’s notices appear not to have gone to any analysts, since they are not PSAC members.  The employees who got notices would

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May 2, 2012 2 Comments

How to Fix the Canada Learning Bond

Chances are you’re familiar with Registered Education Savings Plans. Though they’ve been around for 40 years now, it was only with the 1998 budget’s introduction of the Canada Education Savings Grants and their 20% top-ups of RESP contributions that they got big. Nowadays, parents contribute $3.39 billion per year to RESPs, and the CESG program hands out $667.1 million per year. Of course, people pointed out at the time that the CESGs offered much more to families that could afford to

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April 12, 2012 No Comments

Shifting Away from Need-Based Aid in Alberta

Last month, the Government of Alberta announced some fairly radical changes to its student financial aid program, to wit: – The province will no longer count student income, RRSPs and, crucially, parental income in the calculation of revenue. Instead, all students will be expected to make a $1,500 contribution to their education, except for single parents, who will be exempt. – The province is introducing completion grants, as the Herald explains: “$1,000 for a technical certificate, $1,500 for a diploma

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March 2, 2012 No Comments

Final Thoughts on Academic Salaries

So what, if anything, can we conclude from all this salary data we’ve been looking at over the past three days? There are really three issues at play. The first has to do with average salaries – does it make sense that, on average, our professors are essentially the best paid in the world? Well, there’s no reason to begrudge paying top dollar for top talent. If Canadian professors were – collectively – considered to be the best in the

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January 13, 2012 4 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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