A new report from the Fraser Institute–titled Educational Attainment, Migration, and Provincial Spending on Universities in Canada–explores the impact of provincial funding provided to public universities. Report authors Alex Whalen and Nathaniel Li state that they did not find a consistent relationship between per-student spending and educational attainment in the long term, meaning that “higher spending per domestic student does not necessarily enable relatively high spending provinces to reap the rewards of a more educated workforce.” The authors note that interprovincial migration is an important factor in this relationship. “For any given province, substantial migration to another province represents a financial loss for the province when recent university graduates leave after completing their studies,” commented Whalen.
