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Category: Universities

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 1 Comment

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

Ontario Applications Data 2022

Here are three interesting nuggets from last week’s Ontario University Application Centre’s data release. Long Term Trends Students, on average, are applying to a lot more institutions than they used to.  To wit, since 2016, the average number of applications per applicant was 4.7.  It’s now 5.6.  Figure 1: Direct-From-High-School Applications and Applicants, Ontario, 2012-2021 This doesn’t just mean an extra $5 million to OUAC in fees: it affects the way we have to analyse data from institutions.  You probably

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January 24, 2022 No Comments

Tracing Laurentian’s Path Part 4 –Questions, Alternatives and Lessons

So, on January 31 last year Laurentian went into the CCAA process, thus bringing forward hundreds of millions of dollars in debts, and over the course of the next three months tore itself apart in the name of reaching solvency.  100-odd faculty were fired and a few dozen programs shut.  It was all extremely grim.  The question is: was it necessary and were there alternatives? Working backwards from the moment of insolvency, one can ask what happened and ask counterfactuals.

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January 20, 2022 4 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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