Reading summary
Financing Higher Education in Canada
Daniel W. Lang
Revised in March 2003
Introduction:
• Higher education in Canada has always been a provincial responsibility.
• Until the mid-90’s in most Cdn provinces the govn’t either provided or controlled over 90% of the funding that each college and university received. That control included regulation of tuition fees, ancillary fees and revenue from sale of assets.
• Student assistance is shared by the federal and provincial govn’t with private banks being the collection agencies.
• During the last decade the real dollar value of public funding for higher education has dropped 20%. This has forced universities to diversify their sources of income and raise tuition fees.
• Also during the last decade tuition fees on average have doubled and in some cases tripled.
• Since the early 90’s the federal government has required “matching funding” for funding for capital infrastructure, scholarships and research. An example of this would be that for every dollar the university can raise from a private source the government would somehow match it, to a maximum amount. The match could be dollar for dollar or a multiple thereof.
• Most Cdn. universities are legally independent institutions with their own charters.
• Cdn. universities are funded through “transfer payments” and are “line-items” in the government’s budgets. Universities have the freedom to allocate these transfer payments as they chose in their operations.
• As part of the MUSH sector, (municipaliti ...