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Tag: Trends in PSE

Trends in Canadian University Finance

New income and expenditure data on Canadian universities came out over the summer courtesy of StatsCan and our friends over at the Canadian Association of University Business Officers (CAUBO), so today it’s time to check in on what the latest financial trends. In 2014-15, income at Canadian Universities was, overall, a record 35.5 Billion dollars (just above 2% of GDP, if you’re counting).  That’s up 1% in real terms over the previous year and up 5% on five years ago

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September 8, 2016 4 Comments

Governance, Stress-Tests, and Preparing for the Worst

It’s the little things that worry me.  The slowdown in China.  The continuing failure of the Euro-zone to grow.  The fact that the ratio of the US Stock Market Cap to GDP is approaching the levels seen right before the crashes of 2001 and 2008.  Our economy might muddle through, or it might not. Now add on to economic uncertainty the clear evidence that governments are showing decreasing enthusiasm about supporting higher education – nationally, there’s been a real decline

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June 6, 2014 1 Comment

Permeability

Once upon a time, we thought that to indulge in serious thought, scholars needed to be protected from the hurly-burly of commerce and politics.  That’s why an awful lot of American campuses were built out in the middle of nowhere (eg. Dartmouth, Princeton, U Illinois, U Indiana, U Virginia, U Washington), and why many of the medieval universities of Europe have walls – both were strategies to keep out the riff-raff. Nowadays, of course, we think exactly the opposite.  Urban

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May 28, 2014 1 Comment

Cultural Determinants of Data Acquisition Costs

I saw a fascinating piece in the New York Times awhile back.  It was about a trend at American universities, asking applicants if they were gay or not.  Apparently, these institutions believe that by asking students this question, they are sending a message that they are a gay-positive environment. Interesting. Americans think that transparency about identity is the path to utopia.  Enrolment statistics by race?  They’ve got them.  Indeed, they are required to keep such statistics, because of a clutch of laws

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September 19, 2013 3 Comments

Think Big?

With all the chat recently about reducing unit costs through ever-larger instructional units (e.g. MOOCs), it occurred to me that the world already has a lot of models for this.  They just aren’t in the developed world. University World News recently carried a very interesting article regarding a new higher education master plan in Nigeria.  One of the plan’s key elements is to construct a half-dozen “mega-universities” – each with 100-150,000 students – to soak up the rising demand for higher education. 

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May 16, 2013 No Comments

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