Equity and purpose in financing universities: the case of Nova Scotia

Abstract: Nova Scotia has struggled with the funding of its universities ever since it introduced provincial grants in 1963. This is because some of its rather large number of universities and colleges are in very different situations as compared with others. How is an equitable distribution to be achieved under such circumstances? The longstanding solution has been to combine fixed grants based on a historically determined base allocation, with a variable component based on enrolment. But this grew increasingly problematic as the original institutional patterns evolved and, especially, when the province adopted a formula of fixed shares combined with actual reductions in funding. A new formula was required and this article tells the story of its development by the Nova Scotia Council on Higher Education. This article explores both the issues that had to be addressed and resolved and the institutional dynamics and personalities that shaped their resolution. In the end, it became apparent that an equitable redistribution of grants to Nova Scotia's universities could be achieved through this process only if additional resources were forthcoming. Sommaire: La Nouvelle‐Écosse se débat avec le problème du financement de ses uni‐versités depuis l'adoption des subventions provinciales en 1963, éant donné la situation très particuliére de plusieurs de ses nombreux colléges et universités. Comment réaliser une répartition équitable dans de telles circonstances? Pendant longtemps, la solution fut de combiner des subventions fixes s'appuyant sur une allocation de base établie de longue date, avec une composante variable fondée sur le nombre d'inscrip‐tions. Mais, cette méthode est devenue de plus en plus problématique face à l'évolu‐tion des modèles institutionnels et, en particulier, lorsque la province a adopté une formule de parts fixes combinée à des coupures de financement. II a fallu alors trou‐ver une nouvelle formule, et cet article présente l'historique de son élaboration par le Conseil de l'enseignement supkérieur de la Nouvelle‐Écosse. II explore à la fois les questions qu'il fallait régler et la dynamique institutionnelle ainsi que les personna‐lités qui ont influé sur leur résolution. En dernière analyse, il devint évident qu'une redistribution équitable des subventions aux universités de la Nouvelle‐Écosse ne pouvait se réaliser par l'entremise de ce processus qu'avec l'allocation de ressources supplémentaires.     

Beyond the ‘At Risk’ Individual: Housing and the Eradication of Poverty to Prevent Homelessness

A prevention framework represents one of the fundamental means of the Australian Government's contemporary drive to achieve permanent reductions in homelessness. Consistent with prevailing policies in the UK and US, Australia has approached homelessness prevention through identification and early intervention of individuals ‘at risk’ of homelessness. In this article we suggest that prevention strategies focused on the risk factors that individual pose obscures efforts to address the underlying structural factors that contribute to homelessness, or to reduce the prevalence of homelessness at the overall population level. The article examines the efficacy of increasing the supply of affordable housing to prevent homelessness, but suggests that the provision of housing alone may be insufficient to realising related well‐being objectives. In turn, it is proposed that policy which focuses on poverty reduction has the capacity to achieve the sustainable prevention of homelessness ambitions.     

Terror in Japan

Observers of early twenty-first-century Japan commonly note economic, political, and social crisis, on the one hand, and pessimism, lethargy, or helplessness about the possibility of reform, on the other. Yet Japan's civil society was idealistic and energetic in the early postwar decades. What happened? The reform movement that captured much of the vitality of the early postwar decades was either foreclosed, as many were co-opted in the “all-for-growth” economism, consumerism, and the corporation, or crushed in successive waves of repression of dissidence as the cold war order took shape. Political parties sacrificed broad vision and ideals to narrow-interest articulation. While the mass base of the reform movement was discouraged, demoralized, and depoliticized, one minority in the late 1960s turned to violent revolution and another in the late 1980s turned inward to seek spiritual satisfaction. Both paths led to violence. This article looks at the course of the student movement between the late 1940s and the late 1970s, with particular reference to the Japan Red Army, and at the new religious movement Aum Supreme Truth in the 1980s and 1990s. Both adopted “terrorist” tactics, by almost any understanding of that term. However, they were children of their times, reflecting the same deep social, political, and moral problems that Japan as a whole continues to face in the early twenty-first century.