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Category: History Lesson

Les Quinze Glorieuses: Understanding the History of Québec Universities (Part 1)

Over the past few months I have been reading quite a lot of history about Québec universities. And I am pretty blown away by the way that the entire system transmogrified itself in a very short space of time between (roughly) 1960 and 1975. Though expansion in that period was obviously substantial in other parts of Canada, I would argue that nowhere else was there anything like the degree of systemic change in the nature of universities that took place in

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January 20, 2025 No Comments

Re-capturing the early 80s

Most of the time when I talk about the history of university financing, I show a chart that looks like this, showing that since 1980 government funding to the sector is up by a factor of about 2.3 after inflation over the last 40-odd years, while total funding is up by a factor of 3.6. Figure 1: Canadian University Income by source, 1979-80 to 2022-23, in billions of constant $2022 That’s just a straight up expression of how universities get

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January 15, 2025 No Comments

The Blight on the Ivy

A few weeks ago, when I was in New Orleans, I was browsing through the higher education section at Beckham’s, a large, uber-musty used book store on Decatur just inside the Quarter, when I found A Blight on the Ivy by Robert and Katherine (Dr & Mrs, according to the inside flap) Gordon. Published in 1962, it is a book about a “crisis” on the modern campus. What kind of crisis, you ask? Well, check out the subtitle: “The flunkouts,

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November 6, 2024 No Comments

The Memory Hole

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

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September 11, 2024 2 Comments

National Programs in Areas of Provincial Jurisdiction

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

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April 29, 2024 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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