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Tag: Ontario

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

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December 3, 2020 2 Comments

Ontario’s PBF System: Much Ado About Nothing

Morning all.  Last week, the Government of Ontario published all the new Strategic Mandate Agreements (SMAs) that it signed with the province’s 40-odd universities and colleges.  Included in each of these documents were key information around the “Revolutionary” Performance-Based Funding system announced in April 2019.  This was important first because it confirmed the indicators in use (in the entire 20 months since the PBF was announced, the government never publicly stated what the indicators would be: appallingly, everything we have known about

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December 2, 2020 2 Comments

Canada Christian College

There has been some brouhaha in Ontario about Canada Christian College (CCC), an evangelical school in Whitby, being given the title “university” and being “allowed to offer degrees”.  There is both less and more to this story than meets the eye.  Allow me to walk you through it. Let’s start at the beginning: when does a university become a university and who gets to grant degrees in Ontario?  Well, until 2000, you needed an Act of the Legislature.  CCC received

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November 3, 2020 No Comments

Encore une fois

You may remember that late in 2018 the Ontario government decided to put the kibosh on funding l’Université de l’Ontario français (l’UOF).  Then last fall, the federal government – showing a key eye for supporting minority language rights in Ontario if not consistency in funding minority language rights across the country – popped up and offered to pay for half of the running costs over the next eight years.  Up front.  As in, all the running costs for the first 4-5 years,

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March 10, 2020 No Comments

The Shifting Cost-base of Ontario’s Higher Education System

Today, I want to talk about a massive shift in the higher education cost base that has gone largely unremarked but had huge implications for institutions across the country. Let’s start by looking at Ontario undergraduate application statistics for 2020, the preliminary version of which came out a couple of weeks ago.  Figure 1 shows very little change from last year in terms of the big four application areas.  STEM is down a tad, but nothing to write home about

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February 10, 2020 1 Comment

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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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