The World of Higher Education Podcast Listen now →

The World of Higher Education Podcast Listen now →

Category: Politics

Stalemate

A few of you have asked why we haven’t been writing about Quebec lately. Frankly, what’s the point? This ceased long ago to be about education. It’s completely mystifying how this has gone on as long as it has. As a recent CROP poll shows, two-thirds of the province backs the premier on tuition fees, half back his remarkably illiberal Loi 78 (and even larger majorities back most of the specific measures). And yet the government still can’t get traction. It

Read More »
June 1, 2012 No Comments

Those Statscan Cutbacks

Many will have seen news yesterday about large cutbacks in the works at Statistics Canada. On the basis of the news that lots of PSAC members had received notices that their jobs may be “affected,” a number of pro-Statscan commentators rushed to say that the agency needed to be saved because it provided such fantastic, non-partisan analysis. Well, yes. But yesterday’s notices appear not to have gone to any analysts, since they are not PSAC members.  The employees who got notices would

Read More »
May 2, 2012 2 Comments

How Jean Charest Could Learn to Stop Worrying and Love a Tuition Rollback

If you’re Jean Charest, you’re probably starting to get antsy about the student strike jeopardizing the winter semester. But there’s actually a pretty simple way that the Quebec government could solve the impasse. A few weeks ago, we explained how what universities charge (sticker price) is different from what students pay (net tuition), due to the multi-headed loan-and-bursary monster known as student aid. But loans and bursaries aren’t the only way to offset tuition – there are also billions of

Read More »
April 11, 2012 1 Comment

The Ontario Budget

Well, I don’t think anyone quite expected that. The quick summary: faced with enormous structural deficits, the Ontario government chose to close the fiscal gap with delays in capital projects, some cross-government efficiency measures and – not to put too fine a point on it – sticking it to public sector workers. The upside is that as a result they managed to avoid program cuts in most areas, which to be honest is a bit of a miracle. If you

Read More »
March 28, 2012 No Comments

The Tensions in First Nations PSE

One thing that rarely gets talked about in First Nations’ higher education is the question of who’s driving the agenda – chiefs, elders or students? As with any political agenda, there are a number of legitimate actors with different and valid interests. The first set of actors are the chiefs. They have a big say in Aboriginal PSE, not just in Saskatchewan where they actually own First Nations University of Canada, but anywhere that small Aboriginal institutes have sprung up

Read More »
March 12, 2012 1 Comment

One Thought to Start Your Day

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.

Subscribe

Search Posts

Search Publications

Social Media

Linkedin Youtube Spotify

Recent Posts

More thoughts on...