Quick, fun exercise: who are the top “Higher Education Premiers” of the 21^st Century?  Let’s define this as simply the Premiers who made the largest investments in the sector (my criteria here is biggest increase over any four-year period – otherwise premiers with long tenures tend to get penalized).  Go ahead, write down your top four right now before I walk you through the data.  Anyone who guesses number 1 gets a gold star because I sure as hell didn’t guess it.

4. Rodney MacDonald (PC, Nova Scotia, 2006-2009).  Real increase: 45.9%

No, I didn’t get this one either.  When MacDonald took over from John Hamm in early 2006, total provincial transfers to institutions sat at $352 million.  A little over three years of minority government later, transfers to institutions stood at $525 million, an increase of over 45% after inflation.  The feds perhaps deserve an assist on this one – the expansion of financing was partially an effect of the Canada-Nova Scotia-Newfoundland accord on offshore resources concluded under the Martin Government, but there was nothing saying his government had to spend it on post-secondary education.

3. Dalton McGuinty (Liberal, Ontario, 2003-2013).  Real increase 2003-2007: 46.4%

When the Liberals came to power in 2003, they really had no ideas on post-secondary.  Among the first things Dalton McGuinty did as Premier was freeze tuition fees for a couple of years while he worked out a policy.  And to help work out that policy he asked former NDP Premier Bob Rae to head up a review of the post-secondary system for him.  The eventual recommended increase – $6.2 billion increase to the sector phased in over four years – was accepted by McGuinty and the results was that the 2006-07 fiscal investment in higher education was over 46% higher than four years earlier, after correcting for inflation.  After that, increases continued (albeit more slowly) until 2010-11, after which budget restraint following the run-up in deficits after the financial crisis began to squeeze.

2. Danny Williams (Conservative, Newfoundland and Labrador, 2003-2010).  Real increase 2005-2009: 49%

Danny Williams may or may not be a great politician, but he did have the good fortune to be a Premier during when oil revenues were simply flooding into the provincial treasury.  And he put a lot of this money into higher education: transfers to Memorial University and the College of the North Atlantic jumped from $266 million to $424 million in just four years: an increase of just over 49% after inflation.  The big spending didn’t stop with Williams: his successor, Kathy Dunderdale, added some big bucks in her first year of office, but as provincial finances started to tighten, this generosity did not last and by the end of her term, transfers to institutions had started to decline again.

1. Ralph Klein (Conservative, Alberta, 1992-2006).  Real increase 2002-2006: 51%

Yea, this one surprised the hell out me: I was always under the impression that the big run-up in financing in Alberta was during the Stelmach government but in fact it happened much earlier.  Klein’s reputation as a fiscal conservative and enemy of higher education stems from what happened early in his term as premier, when he cut the higher education budget by 21% over three years.  But take a look at his last four years as Premier and you see a different story: spending on post-secondary went from $1.32 billion, to $2.19 billion an increase of 51% after controlling for inflation.  The first year of the Stelmach government was indeed a mind-bender, bringing as it did an increase in spending of 25% in a single year, but spending flattened out after that.

There are three things to draw from all this.  The first is that Dalton McGuinty is pretty much the only centre/left-of-centre Premier in the past twenty years to have made truly significant investments in higher education institutions.  The second is that three of the four biggest increases in expenditures were fuelled either directly or indirectly from big increases in oil and gas revenues: that is to say, big increases in institutional funding usually require “money from heaven” in the form of resource royalties.  And the third is that – at least until ten years ago – there was no reason to think that right-of-centre governments are adversely disposed to making big investments in higher education.  Three of these four premiers were Conservatives.  And yes, they were playing with money from heaven: but as long as such money exists, they can be persuaded that higher education is a good investment.