Tag: Performance-Based Funding

Performance-Based Funding 101: Measuring Skills

Yesterday,  I critiqued most of the indicators being suggested for the new Ontario PBF system.  But I left one out because I thought it was worth a blog all on its own, and that is the indicator related to “skills and competencies”.  It’s the indicator that is likely to draw the most heat from the higher education traditionalists, and so it is worth drilling into. In principle, measuring the ability of institutions to provide students more of the skills that allow

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Performance-Based Funding 101: The Indicators

Ok guys, I’m going to take the rest of the week to nerd out about performance-based funding (PBF) indicators, since clearly this is all anyone here in Ontario is going to be talking about for the next few months.  I’m going to start with the issue of what indicators are going to be used—and fair warning: this is going to be long. (Reminder to readers: I actually do this stuff for a living.  If you think your institution needs help

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How to Avoid Sounding Misinformed About Performance-Based Funding

Judging from various commentary I’ve seen/heard over the last few days, I suspect we’re all about to hear quite a lot of nonsense about Ontario’s proposed new Performance-based Funding (PBF) system.  Some of this is a natural consequence of the Conservatives announcing a general policy without announcing any details, which allows people’s imaginations to run rampant (and where Conservatives and higher education are concerned, academics’ imaginations can get pretty wild).  So, let’s just go through a few basics about PBF

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The Bombshell in the Ontario Budget

Morning all.  Yesterday at Queen’s Park, Finance Minister Vic Fedeli brought in the Ontario Conservatives’ first budget of their new mandate.   There were cuts of various sorts, particularly in social services, but in many ways it was gentler than people expected: the plan involves getting the budget to balance in five years, which frankly is what the Liberals probably would have done anyway (though they wouldn’t have got there exclusively by reducing the spend side).  It’s not even a strict

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How to Fund (2)

As I noted yesterday, in Canada we have some kind of phobia about output-based funding.  In the 1990s, Ontario and Alberta introduced, and then later killed, key performance indicators with funding attached.  Quebec used to pay some money out to institutions based on the number of degrees awarded, not just students enrolled, but they killed that a few years ago too (I’m sure the rumour that it did so because McGill did particularly well on that metric is totally unfounded).

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