Canada

The report (downloadable PDF) of the so-called Expert Panel on Post-Secondary Institution Funding and Alberta’s Competitiveness released last week calls for the government to stop telling universities, colleges and technical institutes how to do their jobs.

Then it proceeds to explain how the province should require the same institutions to do their jobs.

What’s with this apparent contradiction in the murky report from a panel supposedly set up last fall to advise the government how Alberta’s post-secondary institutions should be funded, but then dives into how to respond to MAGA obsessions dear to the hearts of Premier Danielle Smith and her United Conservative Party base?

One key to unravelling this puzzle, then, is simply to understand that when the report says “the government,” it is almost always talking about the federal government, historically a significant funder of Alberta university research despite the fact the institutions themselves come under provincial jurisdiction.