So, was that a fun year, or what?

From Marc “Tonya” Miller and the federal government knee-capping the postsecondary sector in January to Marc “Harding” Miller and the federal government coming back around in September to knee-cap the college sector specifically to Ontario college presidents calling each other whores and more…it was a year to remember. Heck of a ride.

But as catastrophic as the current fall in revenue seems, it’s worth remembering a couple of things. First, we’re not alone in this. Australia, the UK, France, the Netherlands: they’re all going through something similar. So are some (primarily but not exclusively blue) US states. And second of all, Canada’s institutions are still on most measures better funded than those elsewhere in the OECD (although that advantage is getting narrower all the time). So there’s an argument to be made that there’s nothing special going on here, and in a way this is just reversion to the mean. Not a lot of comfort in that, obviously, but misery loves company, etc.

There is, I think, a  world-wide phenomenon (though perhaps it does not capture the dynamics of low and middle income countries) which is: NOBODY WANTS TO PAY FOR IT. Higher education is expensive on a per-student basis and it now extends to a far higher percentage of the population than it has at any point in human history. The implicit assumption within higher education communities was that by broadening access to higher education, we would win more public approval for higher education finance. Instead, by making higher education the norm, we made the “gains” from higher education a lot harder for graduates to see since they weren’t as “exceptional” anymore. There’s a point where attempts to boost access to pos-secondary education ceases to feel like spreading opportunity and starts to feel like imposing chores. Beyond that point, public support for higher education falls.

(More generally, the closer institutions come to being “universal,” the more they seem like utilities, and the fraction of the population that wants “world-class” utilities is vanishingly small. People just want utilities to work, quietly and properly, with no fuss—which is probably why evident dysfunction like months-long campus disruptions from encampments are so deeply unpopular.)

In other words, we’ve spent 80 years building a system of higher education that is simply more expensive to run than the public is willing to support. Some countries have tried to get around this by financializing things a bit, imposing tuition fees but putting off the bill via student loans, and that helps somewhat as long as governments don’t use that as an excuse for continuing to reduce public funding (which, barring the UK, they mostly haven’t). Some, like Canada and Australia, have tried the neat trick of getting foreigners to pay for their higher education systems via international student tuition fees, but over-reliance on this tactic tends to run up against externalities in the housing market.

Which means we finally have to confront the problem of nobody wanting to pay for the system we have created.

There will be huge economic and geo-political ramifications to not paying for the system. Canadian universities depend on having fat margins in undergraduate and professional master’s degree to subsidize research. To a lesser but not insignificant extent, colleges depend on having fat margins in non-tech programs in order to cross-subsidize expensive programs in the trades programs. We don’t talk about these cross-subsidies much (in fact most institutions try to hide them as much as possible, which is a big reason that politicians and even public servants don’t really understand why universities and colleges behave the way they do), but they are fundamental to the way we organize institutions.

Think about the consequences of reducing those cross-subsidies within universities at the exact moment when advances in technology are opening up huge potential advances in energy, materials science, and health. We (and the Brits, and the Aussies, and the Dutch) are simply going to cede advances in these areas to other countries who are not cutting back on science. China, probably. India and Turkey, maybe. And think about cutting the cross-subsidies in colleges at the exact moment when we need more and better-trained skilled tradespeople in order accelerate the construction of housing and other critical infrastructure.

(Remember in 2016, when we could console ourselves that however big a disaster Trump was, at least Canada could profit by offering an attractive landing spot for international science and tech talent? Well, we aren’t saying that in 2024. We could be hiring up a storm of top talent, but the money isn’t there to do it, and the housing market is such a disaster we’re afraid to invite people in. Both levels of government have much to answer for.)

Anyways, it’s easy to bitch about funding but as you’ve heard me say before, no one is coming to save us. There’s zero evidence that anyone in government is suddenly going to decide that Eating the Future is wrong, so the sector is going to have to work out solutions on its own. Non-enshittified solutions, that is. Maybe, just maybe, it’s time to re-think the whole model to make it less costly and more efficient. And that doesn’t just mean asking questions about whether we need this new building, or that academic program or this new executive position, or quite so many student services devolved to the faculty level (all of which are important!) but also some more fundamental questions, like:

Is it integral to our model that undergraduate degrees be four years in length? (There are parts of Canada, like Manitoba, where it is not.)

Are research and teaching really the complementary goods many claim they are, or would more specialization of effort be of benefit? (Equally: why should teaching cross-subsidize research, as it so plainly does in a variety of ways?)

Do degrees need to be awarded along disciplinary lines (which have inconsistent relations to occupations and careers) or are there other ways to do it?

What if, instead of giving research money to (mainly) universities and asking them to get matching funds from industry, we gave vouchers to industry to work with universities/colleges that they could either use or lose?

What if colleges got out of skilled trades training altogether and handed it over to industry?

Few people are going to like all the answers (or even the questions) here, but nevertheless these are the kinds of questions the post-secondary system should be asking not just itself but the rest of society as well.

But that’s all for next year. In the meantime, happy and restful holidays to all. There will be a podcast tomorrow and our AI Newsletter on Friday, but this will be the final blog of 2024. Regular service will resume January 6. Be well