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Category: Policy

Does the Canada Student Loans Program Make Money?

Note: travel has limited writing time. In light of the NDP releasing their New Deal for People, it seemed a good time to re-run this post on the whether the federal government “profits” from the student loan program. Congrats and thanks to the NDP for releasing their platform early, but the claim that is “profiting from student debt” is highly suspect, especially since the 2019 budget reduced interest rates on the loans. You’ll remember a couple of weeks ago I

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June 17, 2019 No Comments

Comparing Internationalization Policies

Last month the British Council and NAFSA published an interesting pair of studies, which I had the good fortune to be involved with.  Three colleagues – Janet Ilieva, Vangelis Tsigirlis and Pat Killingley – wrote the main report (which, among other things, focussed on differences within Europe) and I contributed a companion report on the Americas.  The main report is interesting in a number of ways, notably its collection and collation of data on national research output (and the share thereof which involves international

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June 5, 2019 No Comments

How Performance-Based Funding in Ontario Incentivizes Arts Enrolments

I have noted over the years that there is a strain of thought in the humanities which absolutely revels in its own demise.  I call it “humanities disaster porn”, in which pretty much any tale of atrocities being committed on the humanities must be true because we can conceive of it being true.  Remember the rumour about Japan closing down all humanities faculties that even big outlets like the Times Higher fell for?  That turned out, on a close read,

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May 13, 2019 2 Comments

Performance-Based Funding 101: Alternatives and Next Steps

Yesterday, I explained how the distribution of funds might occur in a single-envelope PBF system (that is, the dominant system in North America, where indicators generate scores for each institution which then govern the distribution of a pre-set amount of money).  And while that is the likely way a PBF system will work in Ontario, it’s not the only possible way and indeed the government has left some hints that it is thinking about an alternative method.  The way the

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April 26, 2019 No Comments

Performance-Based Funding 101: The Algorithm

The biggest missing piece in the Ontario government’s proposed performance-funding system is any discussion of the algorithm by which data on various indicators gets turned into an actual allocation to institutions.  The lack of such a piece is what leads most observers to conclude that the government has no idea what it’s doing at the moment; however I am a glass-half-full kind of guy and take this as an opportunity to  start a discussion that might impact the government’s thinking

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April 25, 2019 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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