The revenue generation strategies of four Canadian universities

Description

This comparative case study sheds light on what happens at universities that depend on public funding when such funding is reduced. The latter part of the twentieth century witnessed a decrease in public funding for higher education in Canada and in numerous other countries. This thesis investigates and reports on the content, evolution and implications of four Canadian universities' strategies for generating revenue in the face of this decrease. The strategies of the universities' faculties of arts, business, dentistry and science are also examined, in order to illuminate the dynamics underlying the universities' behaviour and the influence of institutional, disciplinary and other factors on revenue generation. Similarities and differences in university- and faculty-level strategies are noted and factors that may account for them identified.The thesis makes sense of the research findings and paves the way for future research by situating the findings within existing higher education literature. It begins by positing the existence of a continuum of higher education funding, institutional types and organizational attributes. At one end are public universities that receive all or almost all their funding from government; at the other end, for-profit institutions that derive all their revenue from fees. In the middle are located public and private not-for-profit institutions sustained by a combination of government funding, fees and donations. It is suggested, based on existing literature, that important organizational attributes (including mission, economic logic, resource allocation practices, hierarchy) change with location on the continuum. Early in the thesis, the four case universities' approximate locations on the continuum are identified, on the basis of their respective revenue mixes, governance and missions. The final chapter addresses the extent to which the findings of the research are consistent with the hypotheses implicit in the continuum. It also describes the ways in which the present findings build upon these hypotheses. The contributions include insights into the changes that take place in the economic logic of higher education, the value of academic capital relative to economic capital, and the relationship between education and research, as institutions derive increasing proportions of their revenues from private sources.

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