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Category: Universities

Ontario Universities’ Looming Abyss

I am going to make two controversial claims.  The first is that the Ford government probably gets too much stick for its performance on higher education in its first term, and the second is that Ford’s second term looks set to be a LOT worse than the first.  Ready?  Here we go. The current Ford government in Ontario is often accused of “slashing funding” to universities.  However, as far as direct funding to institutions is concerned, the Ford government is

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October 24, 2022 2 Comments

University Expenditures 2020-21

Morning all.  Yesterday, we looked at details of university expenditures over time: today we will look at how universities spend their money.  I am not going to show any of this in dollar terms, because as can be inferred from yesterday’s blog, all spending is way up over the past couple of decades (about 90% after inflation), and it is up across almost every category of expenditure.  Instead, what I am going to do is express expenditures on various line

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September 28, 2022 No Comments

Trends in University Income

I haven’t done a deep dive into university finances into a couple of years, so I thought I would take a couple of days to look through the latest data from the Financial Information of Universities and Colleges survey (confusingly-named, since it does not include community colleges).  Today I’ll do revenues, and tomorrow expenditures. Let’s start with the simple long-term change in revenues.  Far from being in an “austerity” situation, universities have been growing their total income at a rate

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September 27, 2022 2 Comments

Fun With University Enrolment Data

Just for kicks, let’s look at undergraduate enrolment data in Canada, shall we?  Figure 1 shows enrolment trends at their very highest level: health and STEM subjects on the one hand and everything else (education, social sciences, business, humanities and fine arts) on the other.  Basically, over the past 30 years or so, STEM and health programs have gone from educating a little over one in four undergraduate students to educating a little over four in ten today.  Non-STEM/health fields

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September 21, 2022 3 Comments

The Auditor General on Laurentian

Last Wednesday, the Ontario Auditor-General (AG) released a damning interim report on the Laurentian insolvency.  Because of its interim nature – the AG does not think it likely her office will finish a full report before the Legislature is prorogued for the June election – it does not do justice to the subject.  However, it does make three specific claims, which I think are hugely important and could pave the way for some key resignations at Laurentian.    For some time, I

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April 18, 2022 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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