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Category: Government

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

The New AUCC

Reading through a couple of recent AUCC initiatives – notably: the “five commitments”and its new brochure on the value of universities, it occurred to me how much AUCC’s focus seems to have changed in the last few years. Though it hasn’t really been remarked upon, there seems to be a slow but dramatic shift in the way higher education lobbying occurs in Ottawa. As late as 2000, AUCC still had an unrivalled lobbying presence in Ottawa. Individual institutions were starting

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November 22, 2011 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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