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Category: Institutions

What People Are Complaining About When They Complain About Performance-Based Funding

If you are a faithful reader of this blog, you’ll know I am not a big fan of the Performance-Based Funding (PBF) systems being developed by the governments of Alberta and Ontario (though the latter is a bit less hopeless than the former).  But unlike many who oppose these initiatives, I don’t think PBF is a bad idea in principle: I’ve written quite extensively about why they’re a good idea, at least when designed correctly.  Today I want to talk about

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January 19, 2021 2 Comments

The Miracle of Ontario College Funding

Let me tell you a sad story about Ontario colleges.   In 2018-19, Ontario colleges got a huge influx of extra public money, about $120 million or so, or a bump of about 7%. I’m not exactly sure why – suspect a lot of it was money pushed out the door in the waning months of the Wynne administration.  But then times changed.  In 2019-20, government transfers to Ontario colleges fell by 10%.  And on top of that, the government slashed

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January 18, 2021 2 Comments

Smart Specialization

I want to draw everyone’s attention today to a short but quite interesting report from the OECD, the Evaluation of the Academy for Smart Specialization, a rather unique university/community partnership for regional economic development based in Karlstad, Sweden.  It seems to have been done on a contract basis (i.e. the Academy paid OECD for the analysis), but the unit that did it goes under The Geography of Higher Education, which I urge everyone to keep an eye on because it seems

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January 14, 2021 1 Comment

Centralization and De-centralization in Campus Services

One of the constant tensions in University and College management is working out which services need to be delivered centrally and which can be decentralized and, if the latter, how they can be provided in a way which has at least some semblance of coherence. The deal is this: generally it’s cheaper to provide most services centrally.  Doesn’t really matter what kinds of services: administrative, research, teaching and learning, internationalization, etc.  Economies of scale exist, partially because you get fewer

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January 13, 2021 2 Comments

The Decline of the Master’s Degree

The Master’s degree has a long and complicated history – one that looks very different depending on the part of the world you are from. Briefly: it is either a traditional first degree (e.g. central Europe), a traditional second degree (e.g. here in Canada), a traditional booby-prize for not getting a doctorate (still in some places in the US) or, weirdly, something after a BA, a waiting period of a few years, and the payment of a small fee.  It is

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January 11, 2021 2 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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