The World of Higher Education Podcast Listen now →

The World of Higher Education Podcast Listen now →

Category: Institutions

College Tuition 2014-15

Statistics Canada, for reasons best known to itself, only tracks tuition for university programs.  For college programs, we’re basically in the dark.  We’ve got nothing, nada, zip. In theory, it’s not all that difficult to work out.  All you need to know is price and enrolment for each program offered: sum the prices, divide by enrolment, and voila!  Average tuition.  And yet nobody does it (my guess for why Statscan doesn’t do it?  Something less than full confidence in the enrolment data

Read More »
April 6, 2015 8 Comments

More Inter-Provincial Finance Comparisons

Yesterday we compared provinces on PSE spending as a percentage of GDP – that is, as a percentage of their ability to pay.  More or less, what we found was that most provinces were pretty similar, at 2.5% of GDP, with Saskatchewan a bit lower, Alberta a lot lower, and Nova Scotia and PEI much higher.  But provinces have different economic capabilities and different student participation rates.  So how do all these different expenditure patterns play out where it counts, in dollars

Read More »
April 2, 2015 4 Comments

Some Inter-Provincial Finance Comparisons

Last week, I blogged about how OECD figures showed Canada had the highest level of PSE spending in the world, at 2.8% of GDP.  Many of you wrote to me asking: i) if the picture was the same when we looked at other measures, like per-capita spending or spending per-student; and, ii) could I break things down by province, instead of nationally.  I am ever your servant, so I tried working on this. I quickly came up against a problem,

Read More »
April 1, 2015 1 Comment

Budget Denialism

You’ve heard of climate change denialism?  The use of spurious, crap data to try to undermine public acceptance of the well-established phenomenon of climate change?  Well, there’s something sweeping Canadian campuses that’s very similar.  I call it budget denialism.  Let me show you some examples from two universities in particular: Dalhousie and Wilfrid Laurier. The Dal budget is here.  The focus of complaints at Dalhousie has been the $5.6 million cut to “faculties”.  Now, when you hear the word “faculties”,

Read More »
March 25, 2015 5 Comments

Getting Mugged By Your Own Government

Good morning from Maputo, where word has reached me regarding a truly awful piece of government policy emanating from Regina. Page 14 of the provincial budget briefly suggests that something miraculous has occurred in provincial funding policy: This budget provides 1.0 per cent operating increases for universities, affiliated colleges and regional colleges and 2.0 per cent operating increases for technical institutes and federated colleges.  Overall, the 2015-16 Budget includes $661.2 million in post-secondary operating and targeted funding, a reduction of $8.17 million

Read More »
March 23, 2015 No Comments

One Thought to Start Your Day

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.

Subscribe

Search Posts

Search Publications

Social Media

Linkedin Youtube Spotify

Recent Posts

More thoughts on...