Okay folks, time for me to sign off for the year.

Two housekeeping notes.  First, blog service will resume bright and early on January 6^th.  Second, this will be my last-ever Friday blog.  Many of you have over the years asked how I manage to put out this blog every day.  The answer is that it is getting difficult for me to balance this with the growth of our business (it has been quite a good year at HESA Towers), so I’ve made a decision to pull back slightly and bring the blog down to a 4-times-per-week affair.  We know from our email statistics that you’re a loyal lot, and on average you open about 40% of our emails (which is about 3 times the norm for an email like this), but that number drops quite a bit on Fridays so it seemed like the easiest solution.  And of course, if you’re *really* upset about this, we are offering full refunds on subscriptions.

OK, now to the meat of the matter: what’s the big takeaway from 2019?  I could say something about institutions’ relentless hunt for money, the policy neglect by government, the slow sleepwalk towards a system that survives by becoming a finishing school for the Asian middle class, etc.  But even if the examples of this process in action are getting more spectacular (helloooo Sydney!) none of that’s new: we’ve been drifting this way for a decade.

What’s new and important this year is performance indicators, which are now on their way to being imposed in two provinces (Ontario and Alberta) that make up over half the country’s post-secondary system.  This is a big deal, and probably not something that can be reversed.  Improved?  Sure.  It would not take much to improve the Ontario system – which still eight months after it was announced has yet to be made public because GOD FORBID ANYONE IN THIS PROVINCE MAKE POLICY IN ANYTHING OTHER THAN CONDITIONS OF ABSOLUTE SECRECY –  though based on what we do know of the system, it has several elements which are utterly perplexing.  But the principle that we pay universities and college at least in part for what they produce rather than the students they enroll is probably not going to be reversed.  When the Alberta system is unveiled, it will undoubtedly be better than the system Ontario develops.  And the system after that (there are rumblings BC may do the same) will be better still.  As a country, we will slowly get better at this.

This is good.  Provinces should explicitly state which policy goals they want institutions to pursue, and performance-based systems are a good way to do this (hopefully they pick better goals than “be a big university in a small town” like Ontario did).   Institutions should be rewarded for meeting or exceeding these goals.  Provided governments more or less stay out of institutions’ way in achieving these goals (not a given in ultra-interventionist Alberta, that’s for sure), this division of governments setting goals and institutions choosing how to meet them is the way a system is supposed to work.  We just don’t always recognize it in Canada because in the absence of much government attention, institutions have often simply been able to do what they liked and we think that’s normal when in fact, in international comparative terms, it’s extremely abnormal.

So, one cheer at least for Ontario and Alberta.  They have set the country on a path that will eventually take us to a modern system of higher education governance.  And long-term, I’m pretty sure that’s what we’ll remember about 2019.

That’s it from me.  As usual, I’m always keen to hear your thoughts about the blog and what I can do to make it better (other than keeping it at five days a week).  Please send me a note at info at higheredstrategy dot com if you have ideas.  And for my UK readers: I imagine today is pretty hard for most of you.  Take care of yourselves.

Happy holidays to all, and see you in three weeks.