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Category: Government

The Robin des Bois of Canadian Higher Education

In its budget this past spring, Jean Charest’s government announced its plans to increase tuition in Quebec by $325 per year for five years, beginning next fall. By 2016-17, the basic undergraduate tuition in Quebec will reach $3,792 for a typical, 30-credit year. While the tuition increase will keep Quebec students’ fees well below the average elsewhere in Canada, the increases still clock in at 75% over five years. Clearly there is potential for a significant impact on enrolment. So it

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November 3, 2011 3 Comments

Well, That Was Interesting

The Report of the Expert Panel on R&D, that is. It’s an intriguing and well-written piece of work (kudos to Peter Nicholson), at least as much for what it doesn’t say as what it does. There are three things this report does extremely well: i) it explains the mind-boggling number of tiny programs the federal government supports, ii) it graphically shows how the Scientific Research and Experimental Development program massively overshadows all other panels combined and iiI), it amusingly tells

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October 18, 2011 No Comments

Differentiating University Missions (Part Four)

One way or another, the underlying argument for differentiation is essentially the story of Adam Smith’s pin maker – that there are increasing returns to specialization. What those increasing returns are, exactly, is a matter of some dispute. For Harvey Weingarten, the increasing returns are essentially “more quality” – that is, for any given quantity of dollars we’ll see a higher return in terms of better research, better teaching, etc. He doesn’t really think you can save much money because

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September 29, 2011 1 Comment

Differentiating University Missions (Part Three)

Here’s an important question. Why don’t Canadian governments act as if outputs matter when it comes to funding universities and colleges? There’s nowhere in Canada where the overwhelming majority of operating funding isn’t essentially determined by enrolments (OK, you get goofy exceptions like Nova Scotia where the funding formula is based on what enrolment was in 2003, but apart from that…). But this creates no incentives other than to try increase market share, which essentially is a zero-sum game. It’s

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September 28, 2011 1 Comment

Differentiating University Missions (Part One)

This week, HESA is hosting a conference in Toronto on the subject of Differentiation of University Missions. We’re focusing on this because we think there are a host of factors both inside and outside academia that are pushing institutions towards isomorphism. In a word, there’s a danger that institutions are becoming clones of one another, robotically following the same script – rather like the placid ladies of Stepford. There are obviously a lot of facets to this issue, but broadly,

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September 26, 2011 2 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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