The World of Higher Education Podcast Listen now →

The World of Higher Education Podcast Listen now →

Tag: Ontario

Laurentian Blues (1)

Laurentian University will run out of cash at the end of February.  That’s the most important – but far from only – take-away of the Monitor’s Report filed Monday in an Ontario court as Laurentian University filed for creditor protection. People are throwing around words like “unprecedented” to describe what is happening at Laurentian.  I’m always careful about that because before WWII a lot of wild things happened in Canadian universities (the Honorary Bursar making off with the entire University

Read More »
February 3, 2021 19 Comments

Some Surprising Applications Data

Canada, as I think everyone is, on the whole, in the main, crap at educational data.  When it comes to getting up-to-the-minute data on things like enrolments and applications, we’re mostly hopeless, because everyone does their own thing and nobody bothers to make their data public or comparable until Statscan comes along 28 or months or so after the fact.  There are only two major exceptions to this: the Atlantic Association of Universities, which puts out a super-speedy enrolment check

Read More »
January 27, 2021 7 Comments

The Miracle of Ontario College Funding

Let me tell you a sad story about Ontario colleges.   In 2018-19, Ontario colleges got a huge influx of extra public money, about $120 million or so, or a bump of about 7%. I’m not exactly sure why – suspect a lot of it was money pushed out the door in the waning months of the Wynne administration.  But then times changed.  In 2019-20, government transfers to Ontario colleges fell by 10%.  And on top of that, the government slashed

Read More »
January 18, 2021 2 Comments

Freedom of Speech

You may remember that one of the Ford government’s first acts on taking office was to order institutions to develop Freedom of Speech policies based on University of Chicago principles, and ask the Higher Education Quality Council of Ontario to research and evaluate how free speech is addressed by postsecondary institutions and produce reports thereon.  Their second annual report came out last month and is worth a read (it’s short) HEQCO’s reports focus on two things: events on campus which are cancelled for reasons

Read More »
January 5, 2021 No Comments

Ontario’s PBF System: Odds, Ends and Contradictions

Yesterday, we looked at some of the math behind Ontario’s new funding system, and how a system which is allegedly “60% performance-based funding” will at most result in about $15 million, or 0.4%, of funding re-allocated in some way.  But there are still more oddities to explore. One of my favourite foibles about this funding system is how it seems to have been constructed one element at a time, with no overall strategic intent.  For instance: the main goal of the enrolment-based

Read More »
December 3, 2020 4 Comments

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...