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Category: Institutions

Smith Plus 30

Thirty years ago last week, the Association of Universities and Colleges of Canada (now Universities Canada) published a wholly remarkable document entitled The Report of the Commission of Inquiry on Canadian University Education (I can’t find an online edition but here’s a contemporary account from Maclean’s).  Since the Commission was just one man – Stuart Smith – its public moniker was usually “The Smith Commission”.  It was a remarkable document in so many ways so there’s more than enough reason to go down the memory lane

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October 27, 2021 1 Comment

Governance and Budgeting

Last week, I wrote a piece about how most Canadian universities seem to have come through the pandemic financially unscathed or even a little bit better off.  Briefly, universities pulled back on the spending in expectation of a collapse in revenues and then the collapse never really happened.  Result: higher surpluses. Let’s just say the reactions to this piece were…heartfelt.   And they often involved some combination of the adjective “lying”, and the nouns “tightwad”, “bastard” and “admins”.  To the extent

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October 12, 2021 No Comments

Canada: Not Quite as Good as It Looks in OECD Comparisons

On Monday, Statscan put out a “Portrait of Youth and Education in Canada,” which includes the following graph accompanied by a note to the effect that Canada has one of the highest post-secondary attainment rates in the world because of our high community colleges/polytechnic participation rates. It was accompanied by the following graph: Figure 1: Highest Level of Educational Attainment, 25 to 34-year-olds, Canada and OECD average 2019, as per Statistics Canada Now, I know this line of argument. I

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October 7, 2021 1 Comment

What Really Happened During COVID? Part 2

Yesterday, we examined student income during COVID.  On aggregate, income might not have dropped at all once the Canada Education Student Benefit is taken into the equation, though there was probably some re-distribution of money away from students who work summers to those who don’t.  Today, I want to look at what happened to institutions in the pandemic, because again the picture painted by the data emerging from institutional financial statements is quite different from the conventional wisdom about what

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October 6, 2021 2 Comments

State of Postsecondary Education in Canada, 2021

Morning all.  Big day at HESA Towers, as we release the State of Postsecondary Education in Canada 2021 (just click on the link, folks).  As usual, it has all the good stuff about students, staff, institutional finances, government spending, student financial aid graduate outcomes, but this year it comes in a much prettier package, highlighting the many architectural gems found at universities and colleges across the country.  This is phase I of our visual identity/brand refresh that we’ll be rolling out over the next

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September 2, 2021 2 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.

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