PSE

Finance committee sticks to economic role of universities–research “must be commercialized”

Ministers pledge to remove all barriers to study, and create “appropriate economic conditions for students”

Will students believe the federal Liberals after McGuinty’s broken promises to them?

The Association of Universities and Colleges of Canada will put out an updated report this autumn called “Momentum,” about all the progress Canadian university research is making. But this week, while I was chasing Maxime Bernier all over Southern Quebec, they put out a report showing that “momentum” might not be the best word to describe the total funding picture for Canadian universities. Two of my colleagues reported on the, er, report when it came out, and their stories captured the essential point: that total funding per university student in Canada is thousands of dollars less today than it was 20 years ago, thanks largely to rampant increases in enrolment. The result is a substantial gap between per-student funding in Canada and in the United States. It’s the next major challenge in our post-secondary education system and I’m going to spend a fair bit of time on the report’s findings, complete with fancy charts and graphs, after the jump.

I was wondering what’s up with Gordon Campbell’s really weird management of the higher-education file, which is turning into a bit of a spiralling helldive of disaster, when it occurred to me to consult Maclean’s on campus. Sure enough, no surprise, Erin Millar has the news, and it’s seriously not good.