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Category: Universities

Canadian University Expenditures, 2018-19

Ok, after nine years of this blog, you all know the drill.  Yesterday was about university income trends, so that means today covers expenditures.  Let’s start by looking at expenditures by type.  Universities are labour-intensive places, with 59% of total expenditures devoted to compensation of one sort or another (if we were to look just at operating expenditures, it would be higher).  About 10% goes into new buildings, building renovations, utilities and general upkeep.  Another ten percent is devoted “buying stuff” (materials,

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October 14, 2020 No Comments

Canadian University Income, 2018-19

This year’s regular data release from the Financial Information of Universities and Colleges was delayed by about three months this year due to the pandemic, but it was released late last week. (This data does not actually include community colleges – that’s a separate survey that doesn’t get published for another few months, so sorry in advance for the university-centric material) As usual, I have a two-parter today and tomorrow to discuss the results, one on income and one on expenditure. 

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October 13, 2020 No Comments

How Many Universities are too Many?

Yesterday, we discussed whether a university can have too many faculties (answer: yes, but just try reducing them and see how far you get).  Today, I thought I would ask a similar question about universities.  It’s a familiar problem in many parts of Canada.  In Nova Scotia, arguments about whether there are “too many” institutions have been going on for almost a century.  Fifteen years ago, significant parts of BC went a bit bananas when the provincial government decided to

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October 7, 2020 1 Comment

How Many Faculties is Too Many?

Academic bureaucracy is weird.  Basically, about 150 years ago, it was decided that it was important to have two layers of administration interposed between an individual faculty member and a University President (and later, once the university expanded, a senior team with various Vice-Presidents).  One layer came to be called a “department” and one level came to be called a “faculty”.  These theoretically mapped on to the branches and limbs of the Tree of Knowledge (so to speak).  But they

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October 6, 2020 2 Comments

How Open to Be

Last week saw a slew of universities “announce” their plans for the summer.  Some of them appear to be treating it as a strategic exercise in getting one over on competitors (“look how open we are!”), but with one or two exceptions, this exercise is probably a misreading of the situation: pretty much everyone is going to be massively online/remote for the fall.  Going remote, to be clear, is a good thing.  I know that some people like making distinctions

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May 19, 2020 1 Comment

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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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