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Category: Institutions

Narcissism of Small Differences – Admissions Edition

Why do Canadian universities make admissions so complicated? A couple of years ago, for a client, I took a look at the number of different undergraduate admissions requirements there were to various universities.  What I found was that at comprehensive universities in Ontario, there tended to be no fewer that 15 separate sets of admission requirements to various programs or faculties, and at some universities it was as high as 20. Nearly all of them required grade 12 English (though

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November 8, 2012 1 Comment

Reforming J-Schools

I see that a number of foundations – including the Knight, McCormick and Scripps-Howard Foundation– have written an open letter  to American university presidents, urging that they make Journalism schools “more like medical schools” and teaching them through immersion in “clinical, hands-on, real-life experience”. From a historical perspective, this is a deeply weird development. Foundations have played a significant role in changing the course of professional education on a couple of occasions. In 1910, the American Medical Association and the

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October 31, 2012 2 Comments

The Other Demographic Challenge

Okay, so everyone knows that demography’s an issue in higher education. Fewer students means more competition. More old people means more pressure on pensions and health care and hence more competition for public subsidies. Tough times ahead for higher ed, right? Well, yes. But there’s another impact of demography which I don’t think anyone’s really absorbed yet. It’s the impact of a shrinking or stagnant labour market, and in many ways, it could be the most significant demography-related challenge of

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October 15, 2012 1 Comment

When Should McGill Go Private? (Part 3)

Over the last couple of days, we’ve seen how McGill could at least theoretically survive leaving the public higher education system and cope with a loss of its $272 million teaching grant. About 85% of the resulting funding gap could be closed on the revenue side; the rest would need to come from internal re-allocations (basically, shifting away from graduate studies and losing a faculty or two). Probably the biggest implication of abandoning public funding is that the numbers don’t work

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October 12, 2012 1 Comment

When Should McGill Go Private (Part 2)?

Yesterday, we saw how simply by adopting an Ontario pricing system, McGill could get almost two-thirds of the way to financial independence from the Quebec government. Today, we consider if/how it could get the rest of the way and close the remaining $111 million gap. One advantage that McGill has over pretty much every other university in the country is the national nature of its brand. It is absolutely astonishing how many top students from every part of the country

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October 11, 2012 7 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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