We have worked closely with, Megan Dunn, the outgoing President of the National Union of Students (NUS), who is a great advocate for students. But today’s media is full of stories resulting from the election of a new President, Malia Bouattia. The banner headline across the front page of The Times, for example, has a story about a potential mass NUS disaffiliation campaign. More...
By . So, a couple of things happened late last week worth mentioning:
First, the Newfoundland Budget was released and as predicted it was a slash-and-burn exercise. The province, facing a deficit of something like 8% of GDP, had to make major changes. Unbelievably, the tuition freeze stayed, sort of (more on this tomorrow), but student aid took a hit. More...
By . So, last week (see here) I contrasted the fact that higher education was a consistent winner at the federal level over the past twenty years, and contrasted that with the fact that higher education had largely been a loser at the provincial level since about 2010 (and not just in the sense that funding is falling in real terms – also in terms of having the ability to offset those losses with higher fees). More...
By . Freezing tuition is a terrible policy. Free tuition is actually a better idea. At least it’s based on a particular theory of access and public expenditure. A tuition freeze is just a decision not to take any more decisions. It’s a recipe for drift. More...
By . Last week, the Harvard Crimson printed some unofficial estimates on the university’s current capital campaign. Be forewarned: these numbers will give many of you a heart attack, so to soften the impact I’m going to lead by providing some background on the campaign. More...
By . Western Canada seems to be ground zero for talking about Board composition these days. Take, for example, folks at UBC getting upset that government appointments to the Board of Governors lack a certain diversity (i.e. they all come either from old Vancouver money or the tech sector). More...
By . Just for giggles the other day, I took a look at Canadian university expenditures in 2013-14 using (as usual) the CAUBO/Statscan Financial Information of Universities and Colleges Survey. I looked at operating expenditures by category. Then I normalized them per FTE student. And I got some very weird results which I thought I would share with y’all. More...
By . I recently had a chat with a colleague about a piece I wrote a few years ago called “Time for a New Duff-Berdahl”. And over the course of the conversation we came up with two theories about university governance in Canada (and elsewhere I suppose). More...
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