By . One of the most irritating, head-bangingly simplistic slogans in Canadian politics is “no to for-profit healthcare”. It’s one thing to suggest that there should be no financial barriers to accessing healthcare; it’s another to suggest getting rid of “profit”. I mean, the entire system is based on profit. More...
06 juillet 2016
Affordability of Higher Education in Canada and the United States
By . About a decade ago, my colleague Kim Steele and I did a comparison of the affordability of public higher education in all ten Canadian provinces and fifty US states. In general, Canadian provinces did not do well; yes, Canada has lower costs for students, but its student aid system is less generous and – this is worth remembering – Americans are wealthier than we are. More...
A Marginally Less Mediocre Set of Provincial Budgets
By . So, it’s that time of year when I bring you the round-up of what’s happened in provincial budgets over the past few months. Usually, when I do this, I look both at student financial aid and transfers to institutions; this time, I’m going to skip the student financial aid stuff because there’s essentially no change. More...
A National Day of Action
By . Earlier this week Canadian Federation of Students (CFS) decided to hold a “National Day of Action”, its first since 2012. Many may find this a bit puzzling: after all, this is a year in which the federal government increased student grants and doubled the number of summer student jobs. More...
Modes of College-Going
By . At HESA towers, we’ve recently been looking at some data on student costs of living in various countries. This has prompted a number of observations with respect to the ways in which higher education – however global and transnational it may occasionally appear to be – is still deeply rooted in national cultures. More...
Are NSERC decisions “skewed” to bigger institutions?
By . That’s the conclusion reached by a group of professors from – wait for it – smaller Canadian universities, as published recently in PLOS One. I urge you to read the article, if only to understand how technically rigorous research without an ounce of common sense can make it through the peer-review process. More...
Improving Higher Education in Africa Through Philanthropy
By . My reputation in Canadian higher education, for better or for worse, is that of being “the guy who knows what’s going on in other places”. This credits me with a lot more knowledge than I actually have. But it does occasionally prompt people to ask me some interesting questions. More...
Non-profit Islands in a For-Profit Ocean
LMS Outage: Exclusive view of UC Davis contract with Scriba
By Phil Hill. When I first heard about the recent LMS outage at UC Davis – which left the school with no LMS access for a full week and without a fully functional LMS through the remainder of the spring term – it was quite clear that this was an unusual situation. More...
