This article originally appeared in the National Post. Below is an excerpt from the article.
By Peter MacKinnon, December 18, 2024
In a post on the website of Higher Education Strategy Associates, an education consulting firm, its president, Alex Usher, makes the case that Canada is “eating the future” by focusing on consumption rather than investment.
He contrasts spending on the elderly with money spent on post-secondary education. The former has seen exponential growth that is expected to continue, while the latter has been stagnant. And the gap is growing: 15 years ago, according to Usher, Canada was spending 4.5 times more on the elderly than on post-secondary education; today, it is six times more.
Universities worry about this trend, and so too should governments and the general public. Canada needs a post-secondary teaching and research capacity that is competitive with the best in the world, and it needs investment that will secure and sustain it.
The insufficiency of current investment is showing in operating and capital budgets, deferred maintenance and in global rankings. We still have a few of the best universities in the world, but less than a handful of them even rank among the top 100 in the world, according to the 2024 Academic Ranking of World Universities.
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Peter MacKinnon has served as president of three Canadian universities and is a senior fellow of the Macdonald-Laurier Institute.
