All right, everyone. It’s the solstice today, and that’s pretty much the signal for everyone to press the pause button and wind things down for the summer. This blog is no exception. I’ll be back on August 26th, unlikely to be rested (packed schedule for the summer already), but hopefully recharged and for another year of data analysis, global updates and snark in roughly equal proportion (the way you all like it, right?)
When I do these end-of-term things, I sometimes like to look ahead to the next term. I’m not sure I can be bothered with talking about the future this time: the fall term is quite obviously going to be driven by a federal election so filled with enough stupid as to drop the national IQ into double-digits (I am, frankly, looking forward to being in Poland and China for most of the writ period).
What about the past? Well, I genuinely think this last year may have been our last opportunity to look ourselves in the mirror and honestly confront our addiction to international student fees and we completely gave that opportunity a pass. For better or for worse, government and institutions alike are truly hooked on this narcotic now. In some respects that’s fine (getting foreigners to underwrite education for your taxpayers isn’t just a public good, it’s a public great); but like all sources of easy money it makes us lazy, and too easy to avoid taking the hard steps needed to re-focus our post-secondary system on better outcomes for students.
Oh, it’ll happen eventually. The crisis will come one day – maybe when the US and UK recover their senses and actually start competing for international students again – and institutions are going to have to revisit some of the budget and managerial decisions they made when they came out of the last big recessions in the early 2010s. And I’m pretty sure we’ll do OK: the number of bright and innovative people coming into leadership positions in Canadian institutions is increasing all the time and I am quite sure they will pull us through – if populist politicians will let them (I remain convinced that the biggest issue we have in Canada is that there is no longer a single provincial government which would – if given a choice – make education better rather than cheaper). But the process might be neither quick nor painless.
Hard problems. But those are for another day – preferably one on the other side of the August long weekend. Until then, I do hope everyone is able to relax and enjoy the summer: you all deserve it.
(if, by the way, you’re looking for good reads, my picks from the six months of the year are – fiction: Anna Burns’ Milkman and Wang Xiaofeng’s The Civil Servant’s Notebook;non-fiction: Tressie McMillan Cottom’s Thick and Sam Anderson’s Boom Town; and for the hard-core nerds among you, my higher ed policy pick is Higher Education in Federal Countries which I reviewed back here. Enjoy.)
Meantime, before I sign off, my traditional plea for feedback. I know y’all like the blog: the number of you who read this thing religiously every morning at 7 AM never fails to shock me. But tell me: how can I make it better? What would you like more/less of? Is the snark too much/not enough? I’d really like to hear your feedback.
Chi-miigwech, be well and be ready to hit play again in nine weeks.
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Thank you, Alex! I learn a lot from your blog.
This is my yearly plea for more balance between university and community college coverage. The only other thing I can think of that would make it better for me (but perhaps not for the rest of your readership) is more content devoted to how teachers (particularly community college teachers) can be strategic in their institutions.
Any insight you have into OPSEU’s charter challenge over the back-to-work legislation that ended the Ontario college strike, along with the charter challenge over the cancellation of the college task force would be welcome.
I echo Brett’s comment above – definitely a need for more community college coverage and consideration. In line with the theme of this particular blog post, the international student phenomenon is dramatically more pronounced in the college sphere (Centennial College, for example, is looking at 62% of its fall 2019 matriculating class being comprised of international students). Would be great to see some attention paid here.