The World of Higher Education Podcast Listen now →

The World of Higher Education Podcast Listen now →

Category: Institutions

Canadian University Expenses, 2017-18

Good morning.  Yesterday, I examined recent trends in income at Canadian universities; today I want to take a look at what is happening on the expenditures side. Let’s start by looking at expenditures by type.  Universities are labour-intensive places, with 58% of total expenditures devoted to labour of one sort or another (if we were to look just at operating expenditures, it would be higher).  About 12% goes into new buildings, building renovations, utilities and general upkeep.  Nine percent is

Read More »
September 13, 2019 2 Comments

Summer Book Report

I read a few books over the summer. Below, a few quick summaries: University of Nike: How Corporate Cash Bought American Higher Education by Melville House. Every year, there’s a new book about how college sports corrupt American universities. They are all true. As a genre, however, they get old fast. This book does the usual, looking at the relationship between the University of Oregon and the sportswear company Nike. It’s not a bad book concerning the University of Oregon,

Read More »
August 30, 2019 No Comments

Servant Universities

A couple of days ago I discussed the choice Canadian institutions had between pursuing an international student market and serving local communities.  I am sure this remark will have been denounced as a false choice by many – and to be fair, it isn’t a perfect binary – so I thought I would expand on that thought. The notion of institutions “serving” their communities is, in some ways, a comparatively recent one.  The medieval universities “served” their communities by attracting students and

Read More »
August 29, 2019 No Comments

Sleepwalking towards Sydney

Morning all.  Our annual State of Postsecondary Education in Canada piece is now available on our website.  It updates the data from last year, plus adds a little bit of extra contextual data on the student body and international comparisons.  But more than anything else, it shines a light on one key theme: the changing finances of Canadian universities and colleges; and the consequence of the prolonged freeze in government transfers to institutions. Back in 2010-11, provincial governments were collectively handing over

Read More »
August 27, 2019 3 Comments

Adversity Scores

Who deserves to go to university?  Particularly the prestigious ones with selective admissions?  It’s easy enough to say “everyone”, or “anyone with the ability to benefit from it”, but when it comes to any specific institution, usually the demand for spaces exceeds the supply.  When that happens, some type of rationing procedure comes into play.  In nearly every country in the world (Canada is a rare exception), this rationing gets done either partly or completely on the basis of a

Read More »
May 22, 2019 3 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...