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Tag: Budget Cuts

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

Postcard from Alberta (1)

I had the pleasure of spending a couple of days in Alberta last week, and I would spend some time writing about the ways in which Alberta higher education is structured differently from the rest of the country.  For that, I have to get into the public finance weeds. Twenty years ago, Alberta arguably had the best public service in the country (it’s still pretty good, but it’s fallen a bit).  One of the innovations they hit on as they

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January 27, 2020 1 Comment

Questions About Alberta Data

I’m heading to Alberta for a couple of days this week, so I’ve been looking more carefully at some of what’s going on there, particularly following the MacKinnon Report on government financing.  And frankly, I’m a little perplexed at what I am seeing. Just to be clear, the Albertan government is currently on a kick to balance the budget after several years of deficits.  Nothing wrong with that.  Higher education is one of the areas they have decided is among those they

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January 20, 2020 5 Comments

Welcome to the 2020s

Hi all.  Hope you all had a restful set of holidays. At the start of a new decade, it is fashionable to look ahead at what will happen in one’s sector.  Personally, I think that life is going to change in ways we can’t imagine over the next ten years, so getting too specific is a fool’s errand.  What I would like to do instead is talk about what the big challenges are going to be. The first big challenge

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January 6, 2020 4 Comments

PSE in Alberta – Part 2

Yesterday, we looked at the history of post-secondary education in Alberta; today, I want to look more at some of the data on finances and student numbers, just to give you all a better sense of how the province compares to the rest of Canada. Let’s start with tuition fees.  For the last quarter-century or so, Alberta has stayed pretty close to the Canadian average.  Until 2013-14 it was above the average; since then, it has been below.  But the

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November 29, 2019 7 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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