A lot of people are getting very upset about this. Personally, I think the bill itself is not really what’s objectionable here and most of what people are working themselves into a lather about. What is Bill 18? It’s meant to be a mirror of a piece of legislation in Quebec known as M-30 (English version here). What M-30 does is that it effectively forbids all sub-provincial public entities from receiving money from the Government of Canada without checking first with the provincial government. Basically, it tells the federal government that if it wants to do things that affect institutions/jur ..read more

Last week, I went through some of the data from the new National Graduates Survey (NGS) on student debt. Today, I’d like to go through the new data from this survey on graduate salaries. It’s…not great. The first way it is not great, of course, is that truly comparable data only goes back ten years. This is because although the NGS goes back to the graduating class in 1982 (with an antecedent in 1976), Statistics Canada decided in 2010 to just switch from collecting data three years after graduation instead of two (initially, this was partially due to some Harper Government inanity, but signif ..read more

When we talk about private higher education, our minds obviously rush immediately to the United States, where a mix of world class universities like Harvard, Yale, and Princeton coexist with a range of low quality for-profits. And almost everything in between. Sometimes we think of places like Korea or Japan — much more heavily regulated, but like the U.S. possessing some very high-quality private institutions. Or like Chile or Brazil, where large numbers of low to middle in quality privates coexist with high prestige Catholic institutions. What we don’t often think of is India, and yet Indi ..read more

The Canada Student Financial Assistance Program (CSFAP)—neé the Canada Student Loans Program (CSLP)—turns 60 years old this weekend. The story of how it came into being and how it still manages to function carries important lessons for the functioning of Canadian federalism, particularly when it comes to making “National Programs.” Education is, of course, a provincial responsibility. It’s part of the deal that made Confederation possible: Quebec could only consent to a national government with representation-by-population government if there a means of preventing majority anglophone protestan ..read more

One huge misconception about student debt is that it is mostly a function tuition fees, or the cost of living. But that’s only partly true. In fact, borrowing is a function of assessed need (that is, assessed costs minus assessed resources). And, in turn, assessed need is subject to maximums. Governments—at least, governments outside Quebec—don’t simply hand out whatever amount students need. Instead, they put maximums on total aid, which for reasons that defy easy explanation are expressed in weekly terms. So, for instance, a student might have assessed need of $20,000, but might only be elig ..read more

Just a quick one today on student debt and why it hasn’t been increasing. So, under conditions of near-total secrecy, Statistics Canada last month published the results of its National Graduate Survey for the Class of 2020. One of the most awaited numbers in this survey are those relating to student debt. With so many folks always assuming that student debt is “skyrocketing,” it is always a good opportunity for myth correction. For you see: student debt is not skyrocketing. It’s almost exactly where it’s been for about the last 20 years. Figure 1 shows total student debt from all sources at gr ..read more

Spotlight Good afternoon all, In this week’s AI newsletter, you’ll find articles about the various ways specific institutions and jurisdictions are responding to GenAI in higher education – coming from Canada, the US, Hong Kong and Mauritania. You’ll also find articles about the constant tension between AI technology providers, and academic publishers and scholars. Finally, we included a couple of opinion pieces on what differentiates AI from human skills, and on where AI is headed in the not-so-distant future. We hope you find them useful!  Also, ICYMI – HESA recently launched its&nb ..read more

On February 24th, 2022, the Russian Federation launched an unprovoked full-scale invasion of its neighbor, Ukraine. In an instant, the entire country became a battlefield. We all remember the names of the cities and towns that came under attack in those early months of the war. Irpin. Bucha. Kharkiv. Kherson. And, more than anywhere else: Mariupol. Twenty-six months ago, Mariupol was a town of 425000 people. Historically, it was a city with a peaceful mix of Russian- and Ukrainian speaking citizens, with just a dash of Greek-speakers as well, a reminder of the city’s history as a center for ..read more

Morning, everyone. Yesterday, the government of Manitoba delivered its annual provincial budget, making it the tenth and final one to do so. That means I can do my annual analysis of provincial budgetary commitments! A couple of caveats before I start. First, there are several provinces that have changed the way they describe their post-secondary budget expenditures in their main estimates. The most important of these is in Quebec, where about a half-billion dollars in capital expenditures has disappeared from the Ministry of Advanced Education’s budget. It’s absolutely not clear to me that th ..read more

Every few months, the head of the CGHE in the UK, Dr. Simon Marginson writes a really good think piece and publishes it in University World News. I am not exaggerating when I say these essays set the tone in global higher education discussions for several weeks (and when those weeks are up, he publishes another one—it’s genius). And it’s great that he does this: Simon’s genuinely brilliant and one of only a handful of people out there who genuinely have a terrific grasp of global higher education dynamics. But there’s one teensy, tiny place where I think I want to push back on his narrative, a ..read more