Where to for Canada's Universities. (November 27, 2006)

    The perception of often cutthroat competition between Canadian universities for students, operating funds, faculty and even senior administrators is back in the news. As of April 2006 Canada's Group of Ten top research universities (similar to Australia's Group of Eight) was expanded to the G13 when the University of Calgary, Dalhousie University and the University of Ottawa were added.

The table shows the G13 ranked according to their endowments in Canadian Dollars.

The formation of the G10 (now G13) was a response to the competition for resources and with the change to the Conservative government of Stephen Harper in Ottawa the whole of Canada's university sector is waiting to see if  the Harper government will continue allotting billions of dollars a year to building and maintaining leading-edge research facilities at universities, as the Liberals did through the Canada Foundation for Innovation (CFI). The last major CFI grants are due to be announced this week, which according to the Toronto Star will be "leaving the coffers essentially empty for the final four years of the foundation's mandate."

So far the government isn't tipping its hand as to its specific budgetary goals for university funding.

Reading the Star's account one is left with the feeling that matters academic are in a state of flux if not fibrillation until the Harper government makes its intentions more clear.

On the other hand the University of Western Ontario's Western News reports, "The Association of Universities and Colleges of Canada (AUCC) has welcomed the federal government's commitment to provide more support to higher education and research... [the government's economic update released Thursday [November 23] included a promise of additional support for the post-secondary sector."

Bonnie Patterson, AUCC's board chair and president of Trent University said that the federal government's commitment in the strategy to maintain Canada's G7 nations' leadership in public sector R&D investment is an important signal to Canadian universities and to the world's research community.

The government's pledge in the Advantage Canada strategy to create the best-educated, most skilled and most flexible workforce in the world is an undertaking the AUCC also applauded.

There seems to be at least the prospect that Canada's Conservative government will not follow the path of John Howard's confrontation with the universities in which it is the nation which ultimately draws the short straw.