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Category: Politics

A Tale of Two Budgets

The first two big provincial budgets of the year came from British Columbia and Alberta and they could not have been more different. To start out in Victoria, the folks in BC had a nice, tidy, almost do-nothing budget.  Grants to institutions rose by 1% – that is, slightly less than inflation – while spending on student aid rose by nearly 23%.  Some but not all of that money went to a new “BC Access Grant” which got trumpeted all over the

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March 11, 2020 2 Comments

Higher Education and the Democratic Primaries, 2020

The Iowa caucuses take place south of the border tonight.  The Democratic Primary has come down to four serious candidates – Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, Pete Buttigieg and Joe Biden – with another two (Mike Bloomberg and Amy Klobuchar) circling around the edges.  It’s a short primary season this time out, partly because Iowa is taking place a few weeks later than usual and partly because California is voting four weeks from now instead of four months from now.  Because

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February 3, 2020 1 Comment

Postcard from Alberta (2)

Yesterday, I discussed the peculiarities of Alberta’s financial reporting system for post-secondary education and how it reflects the province’s controlling approach towards post-secondary institutions (if you don’t believe me, ask anyone who’s been a senior admin at both an Albertan institution and one from another province, and see how often they get calls from Ministers and senior government officials).  Today, I want to talk about how that approach is likely to sabotage the governing United Conservative Party’s goals when it

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January 28, 2020 1 Comment

The New Federal Government

I know this seems a bit late because the election was almost three months ago, but unlike 2015, the victorious Liberals took their sweet time forming a government and it was not until mid-December, after this blog closed for the break, that it issued mandate letters to all its new Minsters.  But with those now completed and made public, we can begin to get a handle on how this minority Liberal government intends to govern with respect to PSE. Let’s

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January 7, 2020 No Comments

UK Election Promises

The UK goes to the polls on Thursday.  There are one or two things of higher importance at stake than higher education (mainly: which party gets to drive the entire country off a cliff and at what speed), but it’s still worth looking at what ideas are bouncing around over on the other side of the pond.  Fees and funding are essentially the same issue in the UK, because so much of universities’ income is tied up in domestic student

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December 10, 2019 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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