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[mbelvadi]

I took a cursory look at the actual report and it appears not to take into account at all of the differential changes in expenses between the US and Canada. Quick summary: if you look only at revenue, and not also at comparative expenditures, you can't conclude anything about whether Canadian universities are "falling behind" as the article and report claim.

Most notably, all major employers in the US have over the last several years had to pay exploding health care costs for their employees, which is not an issue in Canada. So the fact that the US institutions are overall spending more per student doesn't mean that all that extra money is going to anything that helps students, but rather may be just keeping up with local costs. Without access to the raw data, I can't say how much of a factor increasing employee health care costs are in the differential, but any serious analysis ought to have considered it.

Similarly, the US institutions face other costs which have risen significantly in comparison to Canadian institutions. First, the great weakening of the US dollar against the Canadian dollar and against the Euro in the last several years has made for much greater US inflation in scholarly resources like European-published scholarly journals (already among the most expensive in the market). Also, I have noted that the Canadian institution libraries are much more likely to take advantage of open source (free, at least in hard costs) software for major library information services for which US libraries may be shelling out hundreds of thousands of dollars in license fees each year. My personal observation is that the commercial products are not necessarily any better, just much more expensive (and very well marketed).

The mere fact that dollars spent per student FTE have fallen in real terms does not prove anything, because hopefully university staff, like employees everywhere, are improving their productivity and therefore reducing costs per student. I see this in my context, the library, where vast improvements in library search-and-retrieval technology means more students can use library resources effectively with much less (expensive) staff mediation than was needed even just ten years ago.

The key to whether the lower per-student spending in Canada vs the US is hurting Canada is to look at actual educational outcomes (e.g. rate of students being admitted to grad schools, etc.) which are not analyzed in this report.

[cranefly]

Most notably, all major employers in the US have over the last several years had to pay exploding health care costs for their employees, which is not an issue in Canada.

I haven't read the report you mention (link??) but, this sentence is naive. Health care costs are an enormous issue for Canadian universities as well. My university has cut eye care, reduced payment for chiropractic, etc. because of health care costs. The amount spent on health care is not as much as with American universities, but please don't forget in many parts of Canada (I'm in Ontario), things like prescription drugs, eye care, dental, chiropractic, massage therapy, mental health are NOT covered by provincial health care plans, and cost a tremendous amount for universities to offer as benefits.