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Category: Institutions

Post-COVID University Surpluses (Deficits)

Ok, everyone, buckle up. For I have been looking at university financial statements for 2023-24 and the previous few years, and I have Some Thoughts. In this exercise, I examined the financial statements from 2017-18 onwards for the 66 Canadian universities which are not federated with a larger institution and had income over $20 million. L’Université du Québec was excluded from the analysis below because it has yet to release financial statements for 2023-24. Figure 1 shows the average net

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May 6, 2025 1 Comment

Lean, Global, and Tuition-Free: The University of the People Model

One of the most consistent problems in higher education, one that bedevils systems around the globe, is that of cost containment. Costs in higher education grow inexorably, both due to the Baumol effect, that is, services in labor intensive industries like education tend to have costs that grow faster than inflation. And the Bowen Effect, which states that because quality and education is unmeasurable and expenditures are often mistaken for quality, there’s a permanent ratchet effect on university costs limited

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May 1, 2025 1 Comment

Indigenous Relations

To St. John’s, where last week Memorial University published a “Draft Policy for Consultation on Indigenous Verification.” It’s a doozy. Here are the key bits: Verification Pathways for Recognized Indigenous Collectives in Canada Under the policy, an applicant will follow one of the three verification pathways for membership/citizenship with a Recognized Indigenous Collective in Canada: Pathway A requires the applicant to confirm their connection to a Recognized Indigenous Collective through the submission of primary documentation; Pathway B requires the applicant to

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April 15, 2025 No Comments

Universities and Gap Years

When starting out in international comparative higher education, one of the hardest things to do is to keep an open mind.  Universities are universities, you think.  They may vary in the way they are managed and funded, but what they are for, what they do and who they serve is the same everywhere, isn’t it?  But this is not, in fact, true.  And one of the most basic ways that universities around the world differ is the ages of the

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April 2, 2025 4 Comments

Observations and Suggestions about Boards of Governors

 Today, a few random observations about University and College Boards of Governors, based on some thinking prompted by a class talk I gave at OISE last week and some noodling about Bill 12 in Nova Scotia. I have three thoughts and three propositions.  1) Boards of Governors Have Complicated Job Descriptions  Formally, the role of Boards is pretty clear. They choose institutional leadership, set (or at least approve) institutional priorities and—this one is the most important—they oversee institutional finances to make

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March 24, 2025 No 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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