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Category: Politics

Free Election Manifesto Advice

OK, federal political parties.  I have some election manifesto advice for you.  And given that you’ve all basically accepted Tory budget projections and promised not to raise taxes, it’s perfect.  Completely budget neutral.  Here it is: Do Less. Seriously.  After 15 years of increasingly slapdash, haphazard policy-making in research and student aid, a Do Less agenda is exactly what we need. Go back to 1997: we had three granting councils in Canada.  Then we got the Canadian Foundation for Innovation. 

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February 12, 2015 3 Comments

The “Skills for Jobs Blueprint”

I don’t pay as much attention as I should on this blog to matters British Columbian, mostly because I don’t get out there often enough.  But the province’s “Skills for Jobs  Blueprint” cries out for some critical treatment, because frankly it’s not all that smart. Turn back the clock a bit: in April 2014, the BC government rolled-out a series of policies that were collectively branded as the “Skills for Jobs Blueprint”.  Much of it consisted of relatively sensible changes

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February 4, 2015 No Comments

Another Australian De-regulation Update

So the last time we tuned into antics in Canberra, the government was trying to pass a fairly ambitious piece of legislation that would completely de-regulate tuition fees while (more or less) maintaining the HECS system, which means post-graduate contributions are always tied to income, and thus do not become too onerous.  The government was also going to cut institutional grants by about 20%, but keep the “demand-driven” system in which government dollars follow students no matter how many students attend.

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January 28, 2015 No Comments

Free Community College in Canada?

As Canadians, we have a tendency to pay an excess amount of attention to developments in the US.  For instance, people are already asking whether the Obama free community college model would work in Canada.  But this is actually two questions.  The first is whether or not someone could make community college free; the second question is whether that someone could be the federal government? Let’s take the second question first: could the federal government be the ones to do this in

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January 15, 2015 2 Comments

That Obama Free Community College Proposal

I was going to start on a series about growth in non-academic staff numbers today, but the news out of Washington late last week was too spectacular, so I’m bumping it.  Did Obama really say he wanted to make community college free? Well, yes he did.  But he might not have meant it the way we all heard it.  And whatever happens, it’s unlikely to occur any time soon. Let’s start with what he actually said (White House fact sheet,

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January 12, 2015 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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