Tuition fees and the demand for university places

Estimating the effect of tuition fee increases on demand for a university education is complicated by the potential endogeneity of tuition fees. The relative homogeneity of university tuition fees within Canadian provinces and the role of provincial governments in university funding and policies, provides an opportunity to use changes in the political party in power to identify plausibly exogenous changes in tuition fees. System estimates that take into account endogeneity of fees show large effects relative to single equation estimates, and to previous Canadian studies – a C$1000 increase in university tuition fees is estimated to reduce the enrolment rate by between 2.5 and 5 percentage points.     

What's for Sale at Canadian Universities? A Mixed‐Methods Analysis of Promotional Strategies

The current fiscal environment has driven Canadian universities to become more entrepreneurial, seeking out and competing over new sources of funding. Despite such intensifying competition, little effort has been made to document the promotional tactics that Canadian universities are using to render themselves appealing to external audiences. This study examines the contents of the home pages of English‐speaking universities in Canada. It finds that, though there are some differences in the tactics that primarily undergraduate and research‐intensive universities employ, both generally strive to emulate the same institutional ‘template’. Moreover, the usage of more unorthodox promotional tactics, drawing on labour market rhetoric or discourses of inclusivity, is limited. These findings are theorised in relation to contemporary work within organisational sociology and strategic management.     

“Sustainable Development” and CIDA’s China Program: A Saskatchewan Case Study

Through funding from the Canadian International Development Agency’s (CIDA) China Program, the University of Regina (UofR), Canada, implemented two major development projects with the Educational Institute of Jilin province (EIJP) from 1990 to 2001. This paper re-examines this historic cooperation. The paper argues that prevailing theories of sustainable development which had been percolating in education faculties of Canadian universities in the 1990s allowed the UofR/EIJP program to transcend a simple international aid paradigm and to focus on the mutual benefit of the partners. At the same time, we observe that despite the enormous goodwill and institutional learning achieved through the UofR/EIJP program the project failed to live up to its significant potential. The paper concludes with some practical measures that institutions might implement to ensure important cooperative projects can build robust international capacity sustainable for the long term.     

Comparing religious education in Canadian and Australian Catholic high schools: identifying some key structural issues

Religious education (RE) in Catholic high schools in Australia and Canada is compared by examining some of the underlying structural factors that shape the delivery of RE. It is argued that in Canadian Catholic schools RE is diminished by three factors that distinguish it from the Australian experience. These are: the level and history of government funding which in turn leads to a relative lack of autonomy of Catholic schools to control their own RE curriculum; external political and social influences on the RE curriculum which is apparent in the popular election of Catholic school trustees; and most decisively, the absence of strong, ongoing bureaucratic support of RE.     

加拿大公共基础教育管理市场化改革面临的新挑战

加拿大自20世纪90年代以来,利用市场调节机制对公共基础教育管理进行了一系列的深度变革.免费、平等、全民的公立中小学教育,严格的公共基础教育监察管理机制,强大的公共基础教育经费支持,改革后的加拿大公共基础教育呈现出了繁荣的景象.然而,自由市场机制这柄双刃剑在帮助变革取得成功的同时,也令加拿大公共基础教育管理不得不迎接新一轮的挑战.     

Mobilizing knowledge in the information age

The continuing evolution of the Canadian university-industry relationship, particularly in the past five or ten years, is discussed. The effects of the need for increased industrial funding of the universities and the need for capable graduates by industry are reviewed. But it is the increasing industry-university interface in science and technology that is changing most rapidly. Academic and industrial research overlap in many complex ways and if Canada is to be a competitive industrial country we must seek additional vehicles to bring working scientists and engineers from university and industry together.     

Effect of Entrepreneurial Behaviour on Researchers' Knowledge Production: Evidence from Canadian Universities

The article studies the differences in knowledge production between academic researchers. In this perspective, it attempts at first to answer the following question: what factors explain differences in knowledge production between Canadian researchers in natural sciences and engineering? After a presentation of some of the empirical evidence related to this first question, a distinction between two types of academic institutions, entrepreneurial versus non‐entrepreneurial universities, is introduced. Drawing from this distinction, four empirical models are suggested to test differences in knowledge production between entrepreneurial and non‐entrepreneurial researchers. The results show, first, that funding, time devoted to teaching activities, research team and individual attributes have a similar but differentiated impact on knowledge production of entrepreneurial and non‐entrepreneurial researchers. Second, there are some unbalanced effects of the variables co‐operation, time devoted to research activities, academic fields and university size on the knowledge production of Canadian researchers on natural science and engineering.     

Commitment‐‐building approaches to school restructuring: lessons from a longitudinal study

Government‐initiated school restructuring began in the Canadian province of British Columbia in 1989. It was accompanied by significant commitments of new funding for schools and high levels of awareness on the part of central officials about the requirements for effective policy implementation. The content of this restructing mirrored efforts in many other jurisdictions but was exceptionally comprehensive. Results of a four‐year study which examined the processes and consequences of restructuring in local schools are summarized in this paper. The paper identifies six key lessons about productive restructuring processes and outlines a promising image of schools capable of such restructuring. Also proposed is an ‘educative’ approach by governments toward educational reform policy and its implementation.     

Financial management of Canadian universities: adaptive strategies to fiscal constraints

Decreasing government funding and regulated tuition policies have created a financially constrained environment for Canada’s universities. The conventional response to such conditions is to cut programme offerings and services in an attempt to lower costs throughout the institution. However, we argue that three Canadian universities have reacted with a different response. Instead of cutting costs, the University of Toronto, Queen’s University and the University of Lethbridge have chosen to implement decentralized budgeting and management structures in an attempt to increase efficiency and seek out new revenues. Using interview data and document analysis, this paper discusses the responses of these institutions and what they tell us about the strategies universities employ to cope with financial challenges that are likely to persist.     

Drawing Back the Lens on Play: A Frame Analysis of Young Children's Play in Puerto Rico

Research Findings: This study assessed public perceptions of child care and its providers in a Canadian province where government funding for child care includes subsidies and a voluntary accreditation process. In 2007–2008, 1,443 randomly selected adults in Alberta, Canada, completed a telephone survey. Individuals were eligible to participate if they had had interactions with a child younger than 14 years of age in the past 6 months. A total of 52% indicated that the government should cover about half of child care costs, and 72% indicated that child care providers at day care centers should have at least a college diploma. Between 80% and 90% indicated that child care providers were as central to children's development as elementary school teachers. One third of parents sought information on child development from child care providers. These parents were more likely to have children in care for more than 6 hr per week, have children younger than 6 years old, and be unmarried. Practice or Policy: The majority of Alberta adults were in favor of substantial public funding of child care. Adults who interacted with children valued the role of child care providers in supporting children's development, which may be encouraging news for providers. Because parents sought information about child development from child care providers, it is important to ensure that providers have both the training and the content expertise to provide parents with current information that will optimize development and support parents in their role. Policymakers, educators, and program planners may consider this information useful in allocating resources to promote child development.     

What factors influence the direction of global brain circulation: the case of Chinese Canada Research Chairholders

As part of globalisation, academics have become more mobile and are tempted to move to institutions that have the most favourable research funding and work environment. The university is now viewed as a global magnet for academic talent and a key institution that enhances competitiveness by connecting cities and nations to global flows of knowledge and talent. Then what factors influence and explain the direction of global brain flows? This research intends to shed light on the relative strengths of the various factors that prompted a group of Canada Research Chairholders originating from Mainland China to choose to work in Canadian universities, something that is happening against the backdrop of a gradual shift of the global centre of economic gravity towards Asia. Such a shift finds expression in the academic world as well, so it is particularly interesting to track the views of these CRCs.     

The funding of universities in the Netherlands: Developments and trends

Recently, the Dutch Minister of Education, Culture and Science proposed that the funding system of Dutch universities be drastically altered by introducing a system of capacity funding. The intention is to abandon the current (direct) student dependence in funding and, instead, to offer a stable, long-term funds perspective. If this capacity funding is actually adopted, a trend break in the funding system of higher education and research in the Netherlands will occur.This article describes the developments in the funding of Dutch universities over the past decades and the (expected) developments for the future. With regard to the near future and in addition to the capacity funding intended the author will also discuss other developments anticipated by him.It will be shown that during the last forty years four generations of funding models have been used in the Netherlands. Soon the changeover to the fifth generation will possibly be made. A number of issues will be discussed, such as the introduction (and enlargement) of lump sum funding, elements of output funding (performance based funding) and competition on the basis of quality.First, some basic characteristics of funding systems in general will be presented. They will be used to analyse the relevant developments in the Dutch higher education allocation systems.     

中国高等教育财政经费来源的变迁:国家财政经费与个人学杂费关系的实证研究

本文利用统计数据对国家财政经费与个人学杂费变化状况、高等教育经费弹性系数和个人负担率进行了计算分析,在此基础上建立自回归模型对2010年的国家财政经费与个人学杂费进行了预测研究,获得的研究结论是:中国的高等教育成本分担政策已经快速实现,国家财政经费比重显著降低,个人学杂费所占比重较快地增加;人均高等教育经费在1999年之前保持增长,1999年之后呈现稳中趋降;个人及其家庭的财政贡献增长速度远远大于政府财政贡献的增长速度,也意味着个人及其家庭对高等教育的经济负担大大加重;今后一段时间内高等教育财政需求面临相当大的压力和隐忧。建议控制高等教育规模的过快扩张,关注生均教育财政指标变化状况,实现高等教育财政来源的更加多样化。     

Scientists' views of science,models of writing,and science writing practices

Written and oral communications and the processes of writing and reading are highly valued within the scientific community; scientists who communicate well are successful in gaining recognition and support from members of their own communities, the research funding agencies, and the wider society. Yet how do scientists achieve this proficiency? Are expert scientists equally expert writers in and of science? Do scientists' perceptions of the nature of science influence their writing strategies and processes, and their beliefs about the role of writing in knowledge construction? This study used a questionnaire and semistructured interviews to document these perceptions, strategies, processes, and beliefs in a nonrandom sample of Canadian university scientists and engineers. The results indicate that the scientists subscribed to a contemporary evaluativist view of science, used common writing strategies, held similar beliefs about scientific writing and nonscientific writing, and agreed that writing generates insights and clarifies ambiguity in science. The engineers held a different view of technology than the common views of science or technology as simply applied science. These findings were slightly different than those found for American scientists from a large land‐grant university. © 2004 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Res Sci Teach 41: 338–369, 2004     

高校贫困学生资助认定实效模型构建与运用——以莆田学院为例

指出当前高校家庭贫困学生资助认定工作中还存在认定制度、认定方法、认定标准、认定过程、管理监督等方面问题,构建高校学生资助认定流程优化4A模型和资助认定"五合一"资助模型,阐述贫困生资助认定模型的运用,可为拓宽资助资金渠道和领域,规范贫困学生认定程序,更好发挥资助功能提供模型参考。     

Some proposals for change to the role of the catholic sector in the Australian school funding policy process

This paper is set against a history of school funding policies in Australia that begins with the first public policy recognition of the disadvantages experienced by government and non-government schools in the 1973 Schools in Australia (Karmel) Report. The paper traces a history of school funding policy linking it with the current backlash against public education and retaliatory backlash constructions of public schools as the new disadvantaged in an increasingly competitive and deregulated school funding policy environment. These backlashes, argued to be against the indiscriminate funding of independent schools policy by several protagonists of public education, are framed in terms equivalent to what Lingard and Douglas (1999) have called ‘recuperative’ politics. From the kind of recuperative statist politics considered in this paper, construing the backlash effects of public and private schools as damaging and unproductive as those emerging from the gender wars in education policy, I propose a move to an Australian school funding arrangement in which all schools, both public and private, are integrated into one deregulated and equally funded sector, as typify diverse school provisions in several OECD polities (Caldwell 2004, FitzGerald 2004).While briefly tracing a school funding policy chronology, this paper also concentrates on the current policy moment in relation to school funding, that signals the end of distinctive public and private education sectors, and in the context of which it argues that private schools should be funded equally to state schools, a trend in evidence since 1996. The focus on the current policy moment entails an abbreviated analysis of the Fitzgerald Report (‘Governments Working Together: A Better Future for All Australians’ 2004), which makes a number of recommendations to the Victorian and other governments in relation to the public funding of all Australian schools¹. The paper addresses the impact of this trend especially on the funding of Australian Catholic schools.     

The ‘Quality Myth’: Promoting and Hindering Conditions for Acquiring Research Funds

Research funding has been undergoing a shift from recurrent, stable funding to competitive funding of projects. The system rests on the assumption that the best proposals or the best researchers receive the resources, i.e., that quality is not only necessary but also sufficient to win a grant. A comparative study of the conditions of fund acquisition was conducted to test this assumption. Qualitative interviews with 45 German and 21 Australian Experimental physicists were conducted. Although the quality of a proposal and the reputation of a researcher are important prerequisites for a successful acquisition of funds, the success of a funding proposal depends on several factors that are not linked to quality and cannot even be controlled by scientists. Scientists used adaptation strategies and universities applied institutional measures to increase their chances of external funding, but with limited success. Under the described conditions, grant acquisition is based on a Matthew Effect by rewarding the richly funded researchers and hindering entry or continuous funding for others. For these reasons it must also be doubted that external funding per se is a useful performance indicator.     

美国南卡罗来纳州高等教育 绩效拨款制度述评

1996 年,南卡罗来纳州议会通过“359 法案”确立绩效拨款制度。该绩效拨款制度面向所 有州公立高等院校, 由州高等教育委员会主要负责制定、解释和修订绩效评价体系和绩效拨款方 式,开展绩效评价工作。通过绩效拨款,南卡州公立高等院校在公共责任和教育质量方面都有所改 善,但其并未解决财政拨款充足问题,且在教育质量与教育效率、绩效评价体系应用等方面存在一 定的问题。     

贫困与关爱的相遇——基于徐州工程学院贫困生资助状况的调查

给贫困生提供全面的人文关怀是贫困生资助的根本任务和价值。人文关怀的缺失影响了高校贫困生资助的效果。高校贫困生资助人文关怀的核心是以人为本,即以贫困生为本;提高高校贫困生资助效果的关键是人文关怀的回归并构建体现人文关怀的长效机制;和谐校园建设是高校贫困生资助人文关怀最重要的实现载体和路径。