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Category: History Lesson

A Short History of Federal PSE Transfers

A couple of weeks ago, I noted that the Parliamentary Budget Office was suggesting that the time may soon be upon us where the federal government is asked to take up a bigger share of funding provincial programs such as education.  In the interests of thinking about where the sector may be headed, it’s worth a quick trip down memory lane to see where we’ve been, and why federal transfers ceased to be a major funding avenue for institutions. Transfers for PSE

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November 6, 2018 3 Comments

History of PSE in Canada Part VIII: What it All Means

Thanks for sticking with me through my highly unofficial and deeply idiosyncratic history of Canadian PSE. I suppose if it doesn’t meet standards of historical inquiry, at least you all now have a pretty good sense of my priorities when it comes to understanding developments in Canadian higher education. Looking back at the full sweep of Canadian PSE’s history, it’s worth thinking about the paths we didn’t take. From the first, we didn’t take the English route of having just

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October 26, 2018 2 Comments

History of PSE in Canada Part VII – The here and now (since 2003).

The current era of PSE in Canada essentially took shape at the end of the Chretien Era.  There has been a little bit of evolution in institutional forms (this is the era in which “polytechnics” arrive and applied research becomes a thing at the college level, and several colleges were converted into universities) but really no change in system architecture. There are certainly budget changes – rapidly increasing in the period to about 2009, and then levelling off with international student

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October 25, 2018 1 Comment

History of Canadian PSE Part VI (to 2003)

The Chretien era – roughly 1994 to 2003 – deserves to be remembered as a time of tremendous change in Canadian post-secondary education.  Or, as an enormous, stomach-churning, roller-coaster.  And though it is mighty odd that a federal politician defined an era in a field of what is essentially provincial, the record is clear. The first defining moment was the fabled 1995 Budget (for those of you to young to remember it, go read the best journalistic account of this

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October 12, 2018 1 Comment

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
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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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