It should come as a surprise to no one (at least no one who has not been sheltering under a rock for the past couple of years) that Canadian universities are in for a serious bout of belt tightening. Not everywhere, and not all to the same extent. But the math is pretty simple: the international tuition fee gravy train has come to a halt and no provincial government seems willing to replace this income, either through higher block grants
Memory-lane time today. Because I just realized it was 25 years this week that the Canada Millennium Scholarship Foundation began inking deals with provinces to give away what turned out to be about $3.7 billion in scholarships. And I think there are some lessons that the folks in Ottawa who are fleshing out the (IMHO) poorly-conceived “national” school lunch program announced a few weeks ago. The story of the Canada Millennium Scholarship Foundation is hard to explain to anyone who didn’t
The Canada Student Financial Assistance Program (CSFAP)—neé the Canada Student Loans Program (CSLP)—turns 60 years old this weekend. The story of how it came into being and how it still manages to function carries important lessons for the functioning of Canadian federalism, particularly when it comes to making “National Programs.” Education is, of course, a provincial responsibility. It’s part of the deal that made Confederation possible: Quebec could only consent to a national government with representation-by-population government if there a
No, this isn’t a Chuck Klosterman riff, and nor is it a pitch for Andrew Potter’s new blog on the end of the analog age (although I would strongly recommend reading both if that period is of any interest to you). It is, however, an attempt to close a little gap in my readers’ knowledge. I have been told by some of my millennial readers that my frequent references to the horror of the 1990s fly completely over the heads
I spent a good chunk of the weekend catching up on reading. On the fiction side, it was Haruki Murakami’s Dance, Dance, Dance, Roberto Bolano’s By Night in Chile, both of which I found good but not great. But I also read a book I picked up from a used book stall in Winnipeg: Future Shock, by Alvin Toffler (his wife Heidi was co-author, but this is deffo not evident from the cover and the marketing). If you’re under 50
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.
