Because of its broad membership, regional breadth, early creation and size, SREB President Stephen L. Pruitt said the commission is poised to produce critical recommendations that will inform not only Southern education decision makers but those throughout the nation.
“AI is fundamentally changing the classroom and workplace,” Pruitt said. “With that in mind, this commission is working to ensure they make recommendations that are strategic, practical and thoughtful.”
The commission is set to meet for another year and plans to release a second set of recommendations soon. Here are the first six:
Policy recommendation #1: Establish state AI networks States should establish statewide artificial intelligence networks so people, groups and agencies can connect, communicate, collaborate and coordinate AI efforts across each state. These statewide networks could eventually form a regional group of statewide AI network representatives who could gather regularly to share challenges and successes.
Policy recommendation #2: Develop targeted AI guidance States should develop and maintain targeted guidance for distinct groups using, integrating or supporting the use of AI in education. States should include, for example, elementary students, middle school students, high school students, postsecondary students, teachers, administrators, postsecondary faculty and administrators and parents.
Policy recommendation #3: Provide high-quality professional development State K-12 and postsecondary agencies should provide leadership by working with local districts and institutions to develop plans to provide and incentivize high-quality professional development for AI. The plans should aim to enhance student learning.
Policy recommendation #5: Assess local capacity and needs States should develop and conduct AI needs assessments across their states to determine the capacity of local districts, schools and postsecondary institutions to integrate AI successfully. These should be designed to help states determine which institution, district or school needs state support, what type of support and at what level.
Policy recommendation #6: Develop resource allocation plans States should develop detailed resource allocation plans for AI implementation in schools, school districts and institutions of postsecondary education to ensure that the implementation of AI is successful and sustainable. These plans should inform state fiscal notes related to education and AI.
The 60-plus member commission was established in February of 2024. Members include policymakers and education and business leaders throughout the 16-state SREB region.
For more information about the commission please see the following links:
SREB Staff
A nonprofit, nonpartisan interstate compact, SREB was created in 1948 by Southern governors and legislators who recognized the link between education and economic vitality. SREB states are Alabama, Arkansas, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, Mississippi, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia and West Virginia. More at SREB.org.
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The idea of institutional autonomy in higher education institutions (HEIs) naturally comes up when discussing academic freedom. These two ideas are connected, and the simplest way to define how they relate to one another is that they are intertwined through several procedures and agreements that link people, institutions, the state, and civil society. Academic freedom and institutional autonomy cannot be compared, but they also cannot be separated and the loss of one diminishes the other. Protecting academic freedom and institutional autonomy is viewed by academics as a crucial requirement for a successful HEI. For instance, institutional autonomy and academic freedom are widely acknowledged as essential for the optimization of university operations in most African nations.
How does institutional autonomy influence academic freedom in higher education institutions in Ghana?
In some countries, universities have been subject to government control, with appointments and administrative positions influenced by political interests, leading to violations of academic autonomy and freedom. Autonomy is a crucial element in safeguarding academic freedom, which requires universities to uphold the academic freedom of their community and for the state to respect the right to science of the broader community. Universities offer the necessary space for the exercise of academic freedom, and thus, institutional autonomy is necessary for its preservation. The violation of institutional autonomy undermines not only academic freedom but also the pillars of self-governance, tenure, and individual rights and freedoms of academics and students. Universities should be self-governed by an academic community to uphold academic freedom, which allows for unrestricted advancement of scientific knowledge through critical thinking, without external limitations.
How does corporate governance affect the relationship between institutional autonomy and academic freedom?
Corporate governance mechanisms, such as board diversity, board independence, transparency, and accountability, can ensure that the interests of various stakeholders, including students, faculty, and the government, are represented and balanced. The incorporation of corporate governance into academia introduces a set of values and priorities that can restrict the traditional autonomy and academic freedom that define a self-governing profession. This growing tension has led to concerns about the erosion of academia’s self-governance, with calls for policies that safeguard academic independence and uphold the values of intellectual freedom and collaboration that are foundational to higher education institutions. Nonetheless, promoting efficient corporate governance, higher education institutions can help safeguard academic freedom and institutional autonomy, despite external pressures.
Is there a significant difference between the perceptions of males and females regarding institutional autonomy, academic freedom, and their relationship?
The appointment process for university staff varies across countries, but it is essential that non-academic factors such as gender, ethnicity, or interests do not influence the selection of qualified individuals who are necessary for the institution’s quality. Unfortunately, studies indicate that women are often underrepresented in leadership positions and decision-making processes related to academic freedom and institutional autonomy. This underrepresentation can perpetuate biases and lead to a lack of diversity in decision-making. One solution to address these disparities is to examine gender as a factor of difference to identify areas for improvement and promote gender equality in decision-making processes. By promoting diversity and inclusivity, academic institutions can create a more equitable environment that protects institutional autonomy and promotes academic freedom for everyone, regardless of their gender.
Methodology and Conceptual framework
The quantitative and predictive nature of the investigation necessitated the use of an explanatory research design. Because it enabled the us to establish a clear causal relationship between the exogenous and endogenous latent variables, the explanatory study design was chosen. The simple random sample technique was utilised to collect data from an online survey administered to 128 academicians from chosen Ghanaian universities.
The conceptual framework, explaining the interrelationships among the constructs in the context of the study is presented. The formulation of the conceptual model was influenced by the nature of proposed research questions backed by the supporting theories purported in the context of the study.
Conclusions and Implications
Institutional autonomy significantly predicts academic freedom at a strong level within higher education institutions in Ghana. Corporate governance can restrict academic freedom when its directed to yield immediate financial or marketable benefits but in this study it plays a key role in transmitting the effect of institutional autonomy. Additionally, there is a significant difference in perception between females and males concerning the institutional autonomy – academic freedom predictive relationship. Practically, higher education institutions, particularly in Ghana, should strive to maintain a level of autonomy while also ensuring that academic freedom is respected and protected. This can be achieved through decentralized governance structures that allow for greater participation of academics in decision-making processes. Institutions should actively engage stakeholders, including academics, in discussions and decisions related to institutional autonomy and academic freedom. This will ensure that diverse perspectives are considered in policy development.
Bashiru Mohammed is a final year PhD student at the faculty of Education, Beijing Normal University. He also holds Masters in Higher education and students’ affairs from the same university. His research interest includes School management and administration, TVET education and skills development.
Professor Cai Yonghong is a professor at Faculty of Education, Beijing Normal University. She has published many articles and presided over several domestic and international educational projects and written several government consultant reports. Her research interest includes teacher innovation, teacher expertise, teacher’s salary, and school management.
References
AAU, (2001). ‘Declaration on the African University in the Third Millennium’.
Akpan, K. P., & Amadi, G. (2017). University autonomy and academic freedom in Nigeria: A theoretical overview. International Journal of Academic Research and Development,
Altbach, P. G. (2001). Academic freedom: International realities and challenges. Higher Education,
Aslam, S., & Joshith, V. (2019). Higher Education Commission of India Act 2018: A Critical Analysis of the Policy in the Context of Institutional Autonomy.
Becker, J. M., Cheah, J. H., Gholamzade, R., Ringle, C. M., & Sarstedt, M. (2023). PLS-SEM’s most wanted guidance.
Hair, J., Hollingsworth, C. L., Randolph, A. B., & Chong, A. Y. L. (2017). An updated and expanded assessment of PLS-SEM in information systems research. Industrial management & data systems,
Lippa, R. A. (2005). Gender, nature, and nurture. Routledge.
Lock, I., & Seele, P. (2016). CSR governance and departmental organization: A typology of best practices. Corporate Governance: The International Journal of Business in Society.
Neave, G. (2005). The supermarketed university: Reform, vision and ambiguity in British higher education. Perspectives:.
Nicol, D. (1972) Academic Freedom and Social Responsibility: The Tasks of Universities in a Changing World, Stephen Kertesz (Ed), Notre Dame, University of Notre Dame Press.
Nokkala, T., & Bacevic, J. (2014). University autonomy, agenda setting and the construction of agency: The case of the European university association in the European higher education area..
Olsen, J. P. (2007). The institutional dynamics of the European university Springer Netherlands.
Tricker, R. I. (2015). Corporate governance: Principles, policies, and practices. Oxford University Press, USA.
Zikmund, W.G., Babin, B.J., Carr, J.C. & Griffin, M. (2012). Business Research Methods. Boston: Cengage Learning.
Zulu, C (2016) ‘Gender equity and equality in higher education leadership: What’s social justice and substantive equality got to do with it?’ A paper presented at the inaugural lecture, North West University, South Africa
In international relations, nation states vie for power and security. They do this through diplomacy and treaties which establish how they should behave towards one another.
If those agreements don’t work, states resort to violence to achieve their goals.
In addition to diplomatic relations and wars, states can also project their interests through soft power. Dialogue, compromise and consensus are all part of soft power.
Foreign assistance, where one country provides money, goods or services to another without implicitly asking for anything in return, is a form of soft power because it can make a needy nation dependent or beholden to a wealthier one.
In 2023, the U.S. government had obligations to provide some $68 billion in foreign aid spread across more than 10 agencies to more than 200 countries. The U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) alone spent $38 billion in 2023 and operated in 177 different countries.
Spreading good will through aid
USAID has been fundamental to projecting a positive image of the United States throughout the world. In an essay published by the New York Times, Samantha Power, the former administrator of USAID, described how nearly $20 billion of its assistance went to health programs that combat such things as malaria, tuberculosis, H.I.V./AIDS and infectious disease outbreaks, and humanitarian assistance to respond to emergencies and help stabilize war-torn regions.
Other USAID investments, she wrote, give girls access to education and the ability to enter the work force.
When President John F. Kennedy established USAID in 1961, he said in a message to Congress: “We live at a very special moment in history. The whole southern half of the world — Latin America, Africa, the Middle East, and Asia — are caught up in the adventures of asserting their independence and modernizing their old ways of life. These new nations need aid in loans and technical assistance just as we in the northern half of the world drew successively on one another’s capital and know-how as we moved into industrialization and regular growth.”
He acknowledged that the reason for the aid was not totally humanitarian.
“For widespread poverty and chaos lead to a collapse of existing political and social structures which would inevitably invite the advance of totalitarianism into every weak and unstable area,” Kennedy said. “Thus our own security would be endangered and our prosperity imperilled. A program of assistance to the underdeveloped nations must continue because the nation’s interest and the cause of political freedom require it.”
Investing in emerging democracies
The fear of communism was obvious in 1961. The motivation behind U.S. foreign assistance is always both humanitarian and political; the two can never be separated.
Today, the United States is competing with China and its Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) for global influence through foreign assistance. The BRI was started by Chinese President Xi Jinping in 2023. It is global, with its Silk Road Economic Belt connecting China with Central Asia and Europe, and the 21st Century Maritime Silk Road connecting China with South and Southeast Asia and Africa and Latin America.
Most of the projects involve infrastructure improvement — things like roads and bridges, mass transit and power supplies — and increased trade and investment.
As of 2013, 149 countries have joined BRI. In the first half of 2023, a total of $43 billion in agreements were signed. Because of its lending policy, BRI lending has made China the world’s largest debt collector.
While the Chinese foreign assistance often requires repayment, the United States has dispensed money through USAID with no direct feedback. Trump thinks that needs to be changed. “We get tired of giving massive amounts of money to countries that hate us, don’t we?” he said on 27 January 2024.
Returns are hard to see.
Traditionally, U.S. foreign assistance, unlike the Chinese BRI, has not been transactional. There is no guarantee that what is spent will have a direct impact. Soft power is not quantifiable. Questions of image, status and prestige are hard to measure.
Besides helping millions of people, Samantha Power gave another more transactional reason for supporting U.S. foreign assistance.
“USAID has generated vast stores of political capital in the more than 100 countries where it works, making it more likely that when the United States makes hard requests for other leaders — for example — to send peace keepers to a war zone, to help a U.S. company enter a new market or to extradite a criminal to the United States — they say yes,” she wrote.
Trump is known as a “transactional” president, but even this argument has not convinced him to continue to support USAID.
Soft power is definitely not part of his vision of the art of the deal.
Three questions to consider:
1. What is “foreign aid”? 2. Why would one country give money to another without asking for anything in return? 3. Do you think wealthier nations should be obliged to help poorer countries?
Back in 2022, just after the last provincial election, I wrote a piece looking forward a few years and predicted that the years 2023-25 were going to be chaos for Ontario postsecondary institutions. And I was right, although I can’t claim to have anticipated any of the specifics. Given that we are now going back into an election, I thought I would try to look into a crystal ball and look at what the province’s postsecondary system will look like financially if our glorious premier is re-elected for another four years.
To do this, of course, requires making a few assumptions, not just about what will happen in the future but, given the inevitable Canadian delays in producing data, what’s been happening in the past two years as well. Hard data on the student numbers which drive aggregate tuition income does not exist beyond 2022 because the provincial government is deliberately suppressing data on this subject. Yes, really. Until last year, Ontario had one of the best records in the country when it came to openness on enrolment stats, usually publishing quite detailed data within six months of end of the calendar year. As of today, it has now been twenty-one months since the last update. By complete coincidence, the data that has not been updated covers the exact period where provincial government was asleep at the wheel in terms of oversight of international student intake. Can’t have that data going out before an election, I guess.
Anyways, that means the following projections require a bit more educated guess work than usual. For transparency, here are my assumptions:
I have based student number projections for 2023-24 and 2024-25 on data I could find from the Ontario Universities Application Centre (OUAC) and from federal open data on student visas issued up to fall 2024.
I am assuming that international student enrolment will bottom out in 2025-26 and resume 10% annual growth thereafter, and that domestic enrolment will grow 2% per year, in line with projected increases in the 18-21 population. The assumptions on international students might be too generous, in which case all my projections will be too optimistic. Keep that in mind as you read this.
I am assuming that the provincial government will not add any new funding to the system beyond what was announced in the run-up to the 2024 budget, but that the extra funding announced as a response to the Blue-Ribbon Panel will be maintained past 2027.
I am assuming the freeze on tuition will be maintained, but a gentle (but below-inflation) rise in average tuition will continue due to students switching from cheaper humanities courses to more expensive STEM ones.
I am going to focus on the main sources of institutional operating income, which are tuition fees and provincial operating government. I am excluding from this analysis anything to do with income from federal or private non-student sources.
Let’s start with public expenditures on postsecondary education. The problem of falling real public expenditures began well before Ford took power, but this trend has worsened under Ford. Until last year, he consistently allowed inflation to erode funding. The only time he increased institutional funding was in 2024, after the report of the blue-ribbon panel, and even then the three-year package he announced barely allows funding to keep up with inflation. When this new funding evaporates in 2027, the prospects for any new funding are uncertain: I think it is more likely that the government will revert to its previous practice of holding funding constant in nominal dollars but fail to provide any help to offset inflation. Assuming this is true, the path of government funding for Ontario postsecondary institutions will be as shown below in Figure 1.
Figure 1: Ontario Government Transfers to Post-Secondary Education, 2001-02 to 2028-29 (projected) in Billions of $2023
Now of course, public funding only makes up about a third of total funding in Ontario postsecondary education. What happens when you include tuition fees? Well, it looks like the graph below, Figure 2. Again, as you can see, the “take-off” point for the system we have today clearly lies in the McGuinty/ Wynne period, but boy howdy did the Ford team double-down on the model it inherited.
Figure 2: Total Operating Income by Source and Sector, Ontario Public Postsecondary Institutions, 2001-02 to 2028-29 (projected) in Billions of $2023
Now, this is one of those cases where it helps to disaggregate what is going on in the system and look separately at what’s going on in the universities and colleges. Let’s start with colleges in Figure 3.
Figure 3: Total Operating Income by Source, Ontario Colleges, 2001-02 to 2028-29 (projected) in Billions of $2023
I’ve been writing about the big fall in college revenues for a few months now, but even I find this graph shocking. Total operating income to the college system is going to crash by about a third between 2023-24 and 2024-25 and then probably will start to recover thereafter. Basically, you should consider the period 2015-2025 as a huge fever dream that is now breaking and sending the system back to exactly where it was a decade ago, minus about 15% of its public funding and a similar drop in the number of students (domestic enrolment really crashed over the past decade).
Figure 4 repeats the exercise for universities. This one might seem puzzling for many, because it appears to show very little drop in funding in the 2020s. I mean, yes, there’s a teeny dip in 2024, but absolutely nothing like what we see in the colleges—so why are universities screaming about their untenable financial positions?
Figure 4: Total Operating Income by Source, Ontario Universities, 2001-02 to 2028-29 (projected) in Billions of $2023
Well, the answer is that universities don’t have a revenue challenge so much as a cost challenge. Colleges have an enormous amount of freedom to rearrange or reduce staff. Universities, to put it mildly, do not, partly because of tenure and partly because collective agreements between universities and faculty contain clauses about layoffs and financial exigency which impose very high barriers and costs to any institution that tries to reduce academic headcount. This forces institutions to force as many cuts as possible on non-academic staff and services, but there are limits to how much you can do before students start turning away.
Plus, of course, universities simply got in the habit of getting ever larger. Looke at what happened in the 18 years before the Ford government took power: 17 straight years where the average annual income growth after inflation was 5%. The internal political economy of Ontario universities simply evolved so that growth less than 5% was believed to be “austerity.” Since Ford came to power, annual growth has been effectively zero, even as institutions are dealing with the costs of accommodating the major shift in students from humanities to STEM. The gears inside universities are grinding to a halt and even going in reverse this year and next. And universities are—by design—poorly engineered to deal with a lack of growth.
So, what can be done? Well, in the world we all wished we lived in, this situation would be attracting serious political attention. But it’s not. Ontarians quite like having world-class universities and colleges; they just don’t feel like paying for it. Had the cuts started a few weeks earlier, or had the election been called a few weeks later, the current Program Apocalypse (which seems more than on course to deliver the closure of over 1000 programs across the province) might have become what political animals call “a kitchen-table issue,” that is an issue so important than voters talk about it at the kitchen table. Kids not being able to get into the programs they want to get into because they have been shut due to budget cuts? Yeah, that’s a kitchen table issue. One that might yet have some impact on the election, though probably not a decisive one.
Could institutions do more to make this a kitchen table issue? Yes, they could. At the university level, institutions could be more overt in saying they will no longer be able to support as many spots in expensive, high-demand programs. At the college level, institutions could be more aggressive about closing programs in the skilled trades. So far, they have been very reluctant to do this even though their high cost-per-student should probably lead a lot more of them to be on the chopping block if financial sustainability were a major issue. But institutions are reluctant to do this because it’s hard to play chicken with the government without seeming to play chicken with the general public. And the only way things could get worse for institutions right now is if they lose what’s left of the public sympathy they have. Which is to say: yes, they could be doing more, but it’s easy enough to explain their hesitation in doing so.
Anyways, sorry to readers in the rest of the country for all the Ontario-centricity. If you’d like to know more about how the mess in Ontario—partly due to inept oversight by the Ford team and partly due to an inept response by federal immigration minister Marc Miller—affects the rest of the country (and it does), have a listen to my guest appearance on the Missing Middle podcast last week. Good fun.
In my capacity as a globetrotting Asianist, I frequently encounter people from the United States who want to brag about democracy. They are often surprised to discover how healthy it is in many Asian countries.
The United States as the world’s longest standing democracy stands in contrast with its great geopolitical rival, China, one of the world’s most authoritarian political regimes. The U.S. Constitution came into effect in 1789, and famously begins with “We the people…” affirming that a government must serve its citizens.
What’s more, U.S. law declares the promotion and protection of democracy, human rights and fundamental freedoms to be “principal” and “fundamental” goals of U.S. foreign policy.
But over the years, politics has evolved across both sides of the Pacific Ocean. By the measure of democracy set by the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) the United States now falls short.
The EIU considers it a “flawed democracy” and ranks it 29th out of the 167 jurisdictions surveyed. The demotion from “full democracy” to a “flawed democracy” came in 2016, the year Donald Trump was elected to his first term as president.
The EIU assesses democracy worldwide based on five criteria: electoral process and pluralism, functioning of government, political participation, political culture and civil liberties. In other words, there is a lot more to democracy than simply having elections.
Measuring democracy by world standards
In this context, the United States scores poorly for its political culture. “The U.S. score is weighed down by intense political and cultural polarisation,” its report noted. “Social cohesion and consensus have collapsed in recent years as disagreements over an expanding list of issues have fuelled the country’s ‘culture wars’.”
Fault lines have deepened in particular over LGBTQ+ rights, climate policy and reproductive health.
Polarisation has long compromised the functioning of government in the United States and the country’s score for this category is also particularly low.
“Pluralism and competing alternatives are essential for a functioning democracy, but differences of opinion in the U.S. have hardened into political sectarianism and almost permanent institutional gridlock,” the EIU reported.
Freedom House, a think tank which analyses freedom across the world, has also observed that democratic institutions in the United States have eroded. It cites: “Rising political polarisation and extremism, partisan pressure on the electoral process, mistreatment and dysfunction in the criminal justice and immigration systems and growing disparities in wealth, economic opportunity and political influence.”
Democracy in Asia and the Pacific
Across the Pacific, we find five “full democracies”: Australia, Japan, South Korea, New Zealand and Taiwan, although the EIU’s report preceded the current political turmoil in South Korea. The region also has 10 “flawed democracies,” including Malaysia, India, The Philippines and Indonesia.
Singapore, a country which is often criticised for its soft authoritarian political system, is also assessed to be a flawed democracy. But there can be little doubt about the government’s effectiveness in delivering services to its citizens. Singapore’s technocratic and managerial style governance have generated one of the world’s most prosperous and efficient economies.
Its GDP per capita, which is a way of measuring the economic wellbeing of a country, is $148,000 — among the very highest in the world, and ahead of the United States, Germany or Japan.
When it comes to economic freedom, Singapore leads the world according to the Heritage Foundation, while the United States ranks a mere 25th out of the 176 jurisdictions surveyed. Other Asia-Pacific economies which rank well are Taiwan (4th) New Zealand (6th), Australia (13th) and South Korea (14th).
Human capital has long been a key ingredient in Singapore’s economic success story. Singapore’s students topped the OECD’s 2022 Programme for Student Assessment which assessed the capabilities for 15-year-old students from 81 countries and economies for reading, science and maths. Indeed, Japan and South Korea are also ranked in the top 10 countries. The United States was ranked 34th with a similar score to Vietnam.
Education is key to democracy.
When it comes to universities, the United States is still the world leader, with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Harvard University, Princeton University, Stanford University, the California Institute of Technology, the University of California, Berkeley and Yale University all being ranked in the top 10 by Times Higher Education.
But Asian universities are now climbing the ladder, with China’s Tsinghua University now number 12, Peking University 13th, National University of Singapore 17th, the University of Tokyo 28th and Nanyang Technological University Singapore 30th.
Asian citizens also enjoy much higher life expectancies than U.S. citizens or those of most other developed countries. Hong Kong tops the list of the world’s highest life expectancy at 86 years, with Japan, South Korea, Australia and Singapore all being in the top 10.
In comparison, the United States ranks just 48th in the world; Americans live on average some six years less than Hong Kongers.
And while Singapore and many other Asian countries are notorious for restrictions on personal freedoms, the trade-off is a safe society and an efficient economy. For example, Singapore is estimated by research group Numbeo to have a much better crime index and safety scale than the United States or France.
No monopoly on democratic values
My American friends seem insistent that their open and free-wheeling society represents a unique source of creativity and innovation.
There is no doubt some truth in this perception — U.S. companies dominate Forbes list of the world’s most innovative companies. At the same time, companies from India, South Korea, Indonesia, Thailand, China and Japan are now climbing up the Forbes list.
And while Switzerland, Sweden and the United States might top the Global Innovation Index, Singapore, South Korea, China and Japan are not far behind.
Comparing the quality of democracy and governance is a complex exercise, something that a short article like this cannot sufficiently tackle.
But it is clear, based on a number of factors, that many Asian countries are doing quite well in developing systems of democracy and governance. The United States faces many deep challenges in contrast and could draw lessons from its Asian friends across the ocean.
Three questions to consider:
1. What is one common measure of democracy? 2. In what way does the United States fall short on measures of democratic strength? 3. What do you think is the most important characteristic of a democracy?
Most of the time when I talk about the history of university financing, I show a chart that looks like this, showing that since 1980 government funding to the sector is up by a factor of about 2.3 after inflation over the last 40-odd years, while total funding is up by a factor of 3.6.
Figure 1: Canadian University Income by source, 1979-80 to 2022-23, in billions of constant $2022
That’s just a straight up expression of how universities get their money. But what it doesn’t take account of are changes in enrolment, which as Figure 2 shows, were a pretty big deal. Universities have admitted a *lot* more students over time. The university system has nearly doubled since the end of the 1990s and nearly tripled since the start of the 1990s.
Figure 2: Full-time Equivalent Enrolment, Canada, Universities, 1978-79 to 2022-23
So, the question is, really, how have funding pattern changes interacted with changes in enrolment? Well, folks, wonder no more, because I have toiled through some unbelievably badly-organized excel data to bring you funding data on this that goes back to the 1980s (I did a version of this back here, but I only captured national-level data—the toil here involved getting data granular enough to look at individual provinces). Buckle up for a better understanding of how we got to our present state!
Figure 3 is what I would call the headline graph: University income per student by source, from 1980-81 to the present, in constant $2022. Naturally, it looks a bit like Figure 1, but more muted because it takes enrolment growth into account.
Figure 3: University income per student by source, from 1980-81 to the present, in constant $2022
There’s nothing revolutionary here, but it shows a couple of things quite clearly. First, government funding per-student has been falling for most of the past 40 years.; the brief period from about 1999 to 2009 stands out as the exception rather than the norm. Second, despite that, total funding per student is still quite high compared with the 1990s. Institutions have found ways to replace government income with income from other sources. That doesn’t mean the quality of the money is the same. As I have said before, hustling for money incurs costs that don’t occur if governments are just writing cheques.
As usual, though, looking at the national picture often disguises variation at the provincial level. Let’s drill one level down and see what happened to government spending at the sub-national level. A quick note here: “government spending” means *all* government spending, not just provincial government spending. So, Ontario and Quebec probably look better than they otherwise would because they receive an outsized chunk of federal government research spending, while the Atlantic provinces probably look worse. I doubt the numbers are affected much because overall revenues from federal sources are pretty small compared to provincial ones, but it’s worth keeping in mind as you read the following.
Figure 4 looks at government spending per student in the “big three” provinces which make up over 75% of the Canadian post-secondary system. Nationally, per-student spending fell from $22,800 per year to $17,600 per year. But there are differences here: Ontario spent the entire 42-year period below that average, while BC and Quebec spent nearly all that period above it. Quebec has notably seen very little in terms of per-student fluctuations, while BC has been more volatile. Ontario saw a recovery in spending during the McGuinty years, but then has experienced a drop of about 35%. Of note, perhaps is that most of this decline happened before the arrival of the current Ford government.
Figure 4: Per-Student Income from Government Sources, in thousands of constant $2022, Canada and the “Big Three” provinces, 1980-81 to 2022-23
Figure 5 shows that spending volatility was much higher in the three oil provinces of Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Newfoundland & Labrador. All three provinces spent virtually the entirety of our period with above-average spending levels but the gap between these provinces and the national average was quite large both in the early 1980s and from about 2005 onwards: i.e. when oil prices were at their highest. Alberta of course has seen per-student funding drop by about 50% in the last fifteen years, but at the same time, it is close to where it was 25 years ago. So, was it the dramatic fall or the precipitous rise that was the outlier?
Figure 5: Per-Student Income from Government Sources, in thousands of constant $2022, Canada and the “Oil provinces”, 1980-81 to 2022-23
Figure 6 shows the other four provinces for the sake of completeness. New Brunswick and Nova Scotia were the lowest spenders in the country for most of the period we’re looking at, only catching up to the national average in the mid-aughts. Interestingly, the two provinces took two different paths to raise per-student spending: Nova Scotia did it almost entirely by raising spending, while in New Brunswick this feat was to a considerable extent “achieved” by a significant fall in student numbers (this is a ratio, folks, both the numerator and the denominator matter!).
Figure 6: Per-Student Income from Government Sources, in thousands of constant $2022, Canada and selected provinces, 1980-81 to 2022-23
An interesting question, of course, is what it would have cost to have kept public spending at 1980 per-student levels. And it’s an interesting question, because remember, total spending did in fact rise quite substantially (see Figure 1): it just didn’t rise as fast as student numbers. So, in Figure 7, I show what it would have cost to keep per-student expenditures stable at 1980-81 levels both if student numbers had stayed constant, and what it would have meant in practice given actual student numbers.
Figure 7: Funds required to return to 1980-81 levels of per-student government investment in universities, Canada, in millions of constant $2022
Weird-looking graph, right? But here’s how to interpret it. Per-student public funding did fall in the 80s and early 90s. But it rose again in the early aughts, to the point where per-student funding went back to where it was in 1980, even though the number of students in the system had doubled in the meanwhile. From about 2008 onwards, though, public investment started falling off again in per-student terms, going back to mid/late-90s levels even as overall student numbers continued to rise. We are now at the point where getting back to the levels of 1980-81, or even just 2007-08, would require a rise of between $6 and $6.5 billion dollars.
Anyways, that’s enough sunshine for one morning. Have a great day.
I don’t know about you, but I find all the writing about the Trudeau legacy pretty goddamn annoying. Weeks and weeks of columnists yelling “resign!” followed by weeks and weeks of the same columnists yelling “he didn’t do it fast enough!” All true; all deeply boring. But since this is basically the blog of record for the sector, it would be weird to let the man leave without an assessment of his effect.
So here goes:
The early years
A lot of people were probably more excited about Trudeau’s win in 2015 than they should have been. The Chretien/Martin regime of the late 1990s and early 2000s was the most pro-science /education in Canadian history. In comparison, the Conservative government of Harper government seemed pretty bad, even though its record on funding postsecondary education was much better than it usually got credit for (its attitude towards government scientists was a different matter entirely). A lot of people assumed that a new Liberal government was just going to reset to the status quo ante, even if that was never really very likely.
There was one great move early on, with respect to phasing out (untargeted) education tax credits and investing the proceeds in income-targeted student grants, a measure which allowed some provinces (like Ontario and New Brunswick) to at least temporarily (until vindictive Conservative governments came to power) re-arrange their aid programs to deliver targeted free-tuition programs for lower-income students. This saved the government money over the course of the Liberals’ first term (it was meant to be revenue-neutral, but that depended on an increase in spending in the 2019 budget which didn’t happen until the COVID emergency—see below).
The Liberals did a lot of other stuff in that first Trudeau term; just not much that was either coherent or lasting. On research funding, the government asked former U of T President David Naylor to advise them on how to run research councils, and when he did they proceeded to take about two-thirds of his advice on the actual amount of funding and well under a quarter of what he recommended in terms of how to manage that funding (it totally ignored the bit about giving up its boutique funding programs, for instance). On its prime innovation strategy—the so-called “superclusters,” which still exist, now devoid of any regional dimension—which the deeply problematic techbro-loving Minister of the era, Navdeep Bains, would create a set of “made-in-Canada silicon valleys”, well…you can read about them here, but they are so embarrassing it’s probably better to pass over them in silence.
There was a lot of money thrown at Skills Training in Budget 2017 and most of it seemed reasonably sensible, but it’s hard to work out how much good any of it did. This government—unlike the Martin/Chretien Liberals—really doesn’t like evaluating its own spending. And certainly the government never really followed this up or turned it into something coherent. An attempt to create a national training benefit in Budget 2019 which seemed like a promising idea at the time but has basically dissolved into thin air because there has been little attempt to promote the program(s). Steps were taken towards better funding for indigenous postsecondary education, but that effort subsequently got bogged in the details.
And this is pretty much the story of Liberal policymaking in general in postsecondary education (and arguably a lot of other policy fields, too): lots of good ideas, not very good at sustaining the attention necessary to execute them properly and make them work. This is what happens when you govern according to the 24-hour news cycle and not the long-term success of the nation.
The COVID Years (Second term)
Less than six months after being narrowly re-elected in 2019, COVID arrived. Broadly speaking, the government’s initial instincts were pretty good: do anything to keep the economy going while we figured out how to live with the virus and waited for the vaccines to arrive. In higher education, that meant pouring a ton of money into an emergency student aid benefit (the Canada Emergency Student Benefit) than turned out to be actually necessary (see my take on what really happened during covid and emergency benefits). I’m not particularly inclined to see this as a failure: hindsight is easy, but given how crazy everything was in spring 2020 I’m inclined to give them a pass on one-time cash handouts. Same with the backstopping of university research expenditures in this period.
What was less forgivable was the tendency to view the brief shift of the Overton Window towards government intervention either as something semi-permanent or as an invitation to extreme hubris. The decision to double the Canada Education Student Grant from $3000 per year to $6000 per year for 2020-21 was probably justifiable: extending it for another two years and then abruptly cancelling it in the 2023 budget was probably not. And then of course there was the WE Charity/Canada Student Summer Grant fiasco. Hubris combined with a lack of execution will kill you every time.
Post-COVID (Third term)
The Liberals narrowly won the 2021 election and then basically went to sleep until the summer of 2023 when it suddenly dawned on them that they were hated by pretty much the entire country, mainly because of inflation but especially housing inflation which was blamed (with some justification) on a rapid influx of international students, particularly (but not exclusively) to Ontario Community Colleges. The influx was not the Liberals’ fault in the least—for this you can blame some combination of a decade or more of provincial underfunding and some truly wild-ass empire-building by a handful of college Presidents—but they were somewhat slow to react. Somehow, they got tagged with responsibility for the problem, and so their Immigration Minister, Marc Miller, set out to solve it.
And so in January 2024, with all of the wit and wisdom that comes from occupying the strategic intersection between arrogance and ignorance in which official Ottawa perpetually resides, by gum, the Trudeau introduced a solution (actually two: there was a second policy package in September which was designed specifically to screw with the college sector). It was a national solution to an essentially regional (southern Ontario) problem, and it hammered postsecondary finances across the country. Some of it was necessary; much of it was not. My estimate of the changes are in the range of $3-4 billion range, with job losses in the tens of thousands. And to a considerable extent, it was the violent, sudden change in international policy combined, deliberately adopted in a manner which was contemptuous of the sector, which is how this Government will be remembered by the sector.
Meanwhile, the feds went on an epic bout of fumbling the research and innovation files. In election 2021, Trudeau promised a Canadian version of DARPA. Budget 2022 turned that into a new Canada Innovation Corporation, which was then basically punted into the long grass because, well, Trudeau couldn’t focus long enough to figure out how to make it work. Then, Inflation ate away the entire value of the big Naylor-induced research package of 2018. That led to a new research package in Budget 2024 worth $1.8 billion (88% of which does not come online until after the next election, it’s so anyone’s guess how much of it ever materializes), accompanied by a raft of new ideas from a panel chaired by Frédéric Bouchard about how to manage curiosity-driven research. The money has now been allocated (in theory), but the feds are not close to working out changes to management. All was supposed to be revealed in the 100% unlamented Fall Economic Statement, but again the Liberals punted. Couldn’t make a decision.
(Simultaneously, the government utterly botched the roll out of the Strategic Science Fund. No one has ever written about this and I’m not going to tell tales out of school—at least not today—but trust me, this was a time-wasting fiasco of enormous proportions.)
The Verdict
At the end of the first term, I compared the Trudeau record with that of the Harper government, and noted that the difference wasn’t as big as you’d think—probably more about vibes than about money (I got some snotty “how dare you” comments from Liberal partisans on that one). And I think that’s still my verdict. The Trudeau government wanted to be known as “pro-Science” and “pro-education.” It just didn’t want to put in the money or the sustained policy attention required to actually be effective. Sometimes the casual inattention to policy details just made spending ineffective; sometimes (as in the case of international student visas) it hurt institutions.
Either way, the cavalier attitude to substance began to wear thin a long time ago. I don’t think many in the post-secondary sector will view the Trudeau era with much fondness.
Remember the spring budget, when the Federal government announced a heavily back-ended $1.8 billion (spread over five years) boost to research grant funding, as well as the creation of a capstone research organization which might have its own funds to co-ordinate challenge-based research? Well, the federal government has recently been fleshing out these announcements through a series of badly coordinated media releases. And so today, we’re going to go on a quick government press release safari to try to work this out.
The three granting councils have all issued statements about how much new funding they expect to receive over the next five years. SSHRC says that its share of the $1.8 billion will be $316 million. CIHR says it is in line for $540 million over five years. NSERC does not provide a figure over five years, but it does say it what it will receive in years one and five, and since these figures are both pretty close to the numbers CIHR cites, I’m going to go ahead and say that NSERC is set to get something around $540 million as well. Total to the councils is therefore $1.396 Billion over five years.
Now, if you’re counting carefully, you’ll realize that total government announcements total to $2.03 billion. Which, it should be superfluous to add, is not $1.8 billion.
Confused? Me too.
And the government is not done with announcements. Recall from the spring budget that one of the key announced changes was the creation of a “capstone” organization which would sit above the tri-councils without actually directing them. Details on what it would do and how were scarce, mainly because ISED and Finance were at loggerheads over the issue and so the feds did what they always do and punted the question for a few months with the magic words “details to come in the Fall Economic Statement.”
Now, it’s not entirely clear that there actually will be a Fall Economic Statement (Dec. 21st is fast approaching and there’s still no date set), but one key question it was meant to resolve was whether or not the capstone organization would, as recommended by l’Université de Montréal’s estimable Frederic Bouchard and the rest of his Advisory Panel, have funds of its own (beyond those run by each of the tri-councils) for a) multi- and interdisciplinary research that falls through the cracks between the councils and b) mission-driven research. I think the general assBudumption in the research community is that while the capstone organization might not get a ton of money for these activities, the sum would nevertheless be non-zero. So we’re more than likely not just $200 million dollars over the originally-announced budget but probably $300 million or more.
It’s not peculiar that this government might go over budget on something. What is peculiar is that the current government, famous for believing (or at least giving every evidence of doing so) that spending money is in and of itself evidence of program effectiveness, wouldn’t take credit for it. If they were actually bumping up their overall spend, past form suggests they’d be shouting it from the rooftops instead of letting some random higher education blogger work it out on his own and then share it with a few thousand of his closest followers.
A mystery to be cleared up soon I guess.
One other point of note here is a wrinkle in how the additional indirect support grants will work. Overall, indirect support has been equal to about 22% of “direct” funding: that is, for every dollar of tri-council grant that goes out, 22 cents accompanies it to cover overhead (most informed observers think actual overhead is closer to 50 cents, but this is another story). The sum being allocated in these announcements—$354 million to accompany a $1.4 billion increase in council grants—is more or less in line with this figure.
BUT—and this will be a big but for some people—the money is only going to be given to institutions which receive more than $7M/year in tri-council grants, which basically means the U15 plus a half-dozen others. Why? Well, because that 22% average is just that: an average. The biggest tri-council grant recipients (i.e. the U15) only get indirect funding equal to about 18% of their tri-council grant haul. At some of the smallest institutions, the figure can be as high as 80%. This equalization formula has, as you can imagine, driven the U15 absolutely spare over the two decades it has been in force, and so you can read this part of the announcement as a victory for the Big Rich Universities.
More when we get a Fall—or possible a Winter—Economic Statement. See you then.
A change of government has not changed the government’s power to intrude upon the autonomy of providers of higher education, which is constrained chiefly by its being limited to the financial. Government can also issue guidance to the regulator, the Office for Students, and that guidance may be detailed. Recent exchanges give a flavour of the kind of control which politicians may seek, but this may be at odds with the current statutory framework.
As Secretary of State for Education, Gillian Keegan sent a Letter of Guidance to the Office for Students on 4 April 2024. She stated her priorities, first that ‘students pursue HE studies that enable them to progress into employment, thereby benefitting them as well as the wider economy’. She also thought it ‘important to provide students with different high-quality pathways in HE, notably through higher technical qualifications (HTQs), and degree apprenticeships’ at Levels 4 and 5. These ‘alternatives to three-year degrees’, she said, ‘provide valuable opportunities to progress up the ladder of opportunity’. As a condition of funding providers were to ‘build capacity’ with ‘eligible learners on Level 4 and 5 qualifications via a formula allocation’. The new Higher Technical Qualifications were to attract ‘an uplift within this formula for learners on HTQ courses’. ‘World leading specialist providers’ were to be encouraged and funded ‘up to a limit’ of £58.1m for FY24/25.
The change of Government in July 2024 brought a new Secretary of State in the person of Bridget Phillipson but no fresh Letter of Guidance before she spoke in the Commons in a Higher Education debate on 4 November, 2024. Recognising that many universities were in dire financial straits, she suggested that there should be ‘reform’ in exchange for a rise in tuition fees for undergraduates which had just been announced. That, she suggested, would be needed to ensure that universities would be ‘there for them to attend’ in future.
However, commentators quickly pointed out that Phillipson’s announcement that there would be a small rise in undergraduate tuition fees from £9,250 to £9,535 a year would not be anywhere near enough to fill the gap in higher education funding. The resulting risks were recognised. When the Office for Students reviewed the Financial sustainability of higher education providers in Englandin 2024 in May 2024 it had looked at the ‘risks relating to student recruitment’ by providers in relation to the income from their tuition fees.
Phillipson was ‘determined to reform the sector’. She called for ‘tough decisions to restore stability to higher education, to fix the foundations and to deliver change’ with a key role for Government. Ministers across Government must work together, she said, especially the Secretary for Education and the Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology in order to ‘deliver a reformed and strengthened higher education system’. This would be ‘rooted in partnership’ between the DfE, the Office for Students and UK Research and Innovation’.
“… greater work around economic growth, around spin-offs and much more besides—I will be working with my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology on precisely those questions.”
In the debate it was commented that she was ‘light on the details’ of the Government’s role’. She promised those for the future, ‘To build a higher education system fit for the challenges not just of today but of tomorrow’. She undertook to publish proposals for ‘major reform’. There were some hints at what those might include. She saw benefits in providers ‘sharing support services with other universities and colleges’. Governing bodies, she said, should be asking ‘difficult strategic questions’, given the population ‘changing patterns of learning’ of their prospective students. The ‘optimistic bias’ she believed, needed to be ‘replaced by hard-headed realism’. ‘Some institutions that may need to shrink or partner, but is a price worth paying as part of a properly funded, coherent tertiary education system.’ She saw a considerable role for Government. ‘The government has started that job – it should now finish it.’
Like her predecessor she wanted ‘courses’ to provide individual students as well as the nation with ‘an economic return’. She expected providers to ‘ensure that all students get good value for money’. Other MPs speaking in the debate pressed the same link. Vikki Slade too defined economic benefit in terms of the ‘value for money’ the individual student got for the fee paid.Laura Trott was another who wanted ‘courses’ to provide individual students as well as the nation with ‘an economic return’. Shaun Davies asked for ‘a bit more detail’ on ‘the accountability’ to which ‘these university vice-chancellors’ were to be held in delivering ‘teaching contact time, helping vulnerable students and ensuring that universities play a huge part in the wider communities of the towns and cities in which they are anchor institutions’.
Government enforcement sits uncomfortably with the autonomy of higher education providers insisted on by the 2017 Higher Education and Research Act. This Act created the Office for Students as ‘a non-departmental public body’, ‘accountable to Parliament’ and receiving ‘guidance on strategic priorities from the Department for Education’. Its ‘operations are independent of government’, but its ‘guidance’ to providers as Regulator is also heavily restricted at s.2 (5) which prevents intrusion on teaching and research. That guidance may not relate to ‘particular parts of courses of study’; ‘the content of such courses’; ’the manner in which they are taught, supervised or assessed’; ‘the criteria for the selection, appointment or dismissal of academic staff, or how they are applied’; or ‘the criteria for the admission of students, or how they are applied’.
This leaves the Office for Students responsible only for monitoring the financial sustainability of higher education providers ‘to identify those that may be exposed to material financial risks’. Again its powers of enforcement are limited. If it finds such a case it ‘works with’ the provider in a manner respecting its autonomy, namely ‘to understand and assess the extent of the issues’ and seek to help.
Listed in providers’ annual Financial Statements may be a number of sources of funding to which universities may look. These chiefly aim to fund research rather than teaching and include: grants and contracts for research projects; investment income; donations and endowments. The Government has a funding relationship with Research England within UKRI (UK Research and Innovation). UKRI is another Government-funded non-departmental public body, though it is subject to some Government policy shifts in the scale of the funding it provides through the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology.
Donations and endowments may come with conditions attached by the funder, limiting them for example to named scholarships or professorships or specific new buildings. However they may provide a considerable degree of financial security which is not under Government control. The endowments of Oxford and Cambridge Universities are substantial. Those made separately for their Colleges. may be very large, partly as a result of the growth in value of land given to them centuries ago. Oxford University has endowments of £1.3 billion and its colleges taken together have endowments of £5.06 billion. Cambridge University has a published endowment of £2.47 billion, though Cambridge’s Statement for the Knowledge Exchange Framework puts ‘the university’s endowment ‘at nearly £6 billion’. Cambridge’s richest College, Trinity, declares endowments of £2.19 billion.
The big city universities created at the end of the nineteenth century are far less well-endowed. Birmingham had an endowment of £142.5 million in 2023, Bristol of £86 million. Of the twentieth and twenty-first century foundations, Oxford Brookes University notes donations and endowments of £385,000 and Anglia Ruskin University of £335,300. The private ‘alternative’ providers of higher multiplying in recent decades have tended to have a variety of business and commercial partnerships supporting their funding. Categories of funding provided by such gifting remain independent of Government interference.
The Review of Post-18 Education and Funding(May 2019) chaired by Philip Augur stated ‘Principles’ including that ‘organisations providing education and training must be accountable for the public subsidy they receive’, and that ‘Government has a responsibility to ensure that its investment in tertiary education is appropriately spent and directed’. ‘Universities must do more to raise their impact beyond their gates’, Phillipson said, so as ‘to drive the growth that this country sorely needs’ including by ‘joining with Skills England, employers and partners in further education to deliver the skills that people and businesses need’.
In the same Commons debate of 4 November Ian Roome, MP for North Devon, was confident that in his constituency ‘universities work in collaboration with FE sector institutions such as Petroc college’. Petroc College offers qualifications from Level 3 upwards, including HNCs, higher-level apprenticeships, Access to HE diplomas, foundation degrees and honours degrees (validated by the University of Plymouth) and ‘in subjects that meet the demands of industry – both locally and nationally’. Roome saw this (HC 4 November 2024) as meeting a need for ‘a viable and accessible option, particularly in rural areas such as mine, for people to access university courses?’ Phillipson took up his point, to urge such ‘collaboration between further education and higher education providers’. Shaun Davies spoke of the £300 million the Government had put into further education, ‘alongside a £300 million capital allocation’, invested in further education colleges’.
However in an article in the Guardianon 4 November 2024,Philip Augur recognised that ‘the systems used by government to finance higher and further education are very different’. ‘Universities are funded largely through fees which follow enrolments’, in the form of student loans of £9,250, now raised to £9,535. ‘Unpaid loans are written off against the Department for Education’s balance sheet’. At first that would not be visible in the full government accounts until 30 years after the loan was taken out. Government steering had become more visible following the Augur Report, with the cost of student loans being recorded ‘in the period loans are issued to students’, rather than after 30 years.
By contrast the funding of individual FE colleges is based on annual contracts from the Education and Skills Funding Agency, an executive agency of the DFE for post-18 education. They may then spend only within the terms of the contract and up to its limit. The full cost of such contracts is recorded immediately in the public accounts. This makes a flexible response to demand by FE colleges far from easy. Colleges may find they cannot afford to run even popular courses such as construction, engineering, digital, health and social care, without waiting lists for places. The HE reform Phillipson considered in return for a rise in tuition fees had no immediate place in FE.
Government funding control maintains a pragmatic but very limited means of means of giving orders to universities. This depends on regulating access to taxpayer-funded student loans. The Office for Students measures a provider’s teaching in terms of its ‘positive outcomes’. These are set out in the OfS ‘Conditions’ for its Registration, which are required to make a provider’s students eligible for loans from the Student Loans Company. Condition B3 requires that a provider’s ‘outcomes’ meet ‘numerical thresholds’ measured against ‘indicators’: whether students continue in a course after their first year of study; complete their studies and progress into managerial or professional employment.
The government’s power to intrude upon the autonomy of providers of higher education continues to be constrained, but chiefly by its being limited to the financial, with many providers potentially at risk from their dependence on government permitting a level of tuition fee high enough to sustain them.
GR Evans is Emeritus Professor of Medieval Theology and Intellectual History in the University of Cambridge.
