CAUBO’s Data Insights series highlights key financial trends in the university sector. The Data Insights provide concise, fact-based analysis of some of the sector’s most pressing risks and challenges.
The analysis incorporates the most recent Financial Information of Universities and Colleges (FIUC) data, available through 2023/24. At a time when universities are navigating significant financial pressures, the series provides timely context to help institutions better understand the trends shaping revenues, expenditures, and compensation patterns across the sector.
The updated entries in the series are available at the links below:
- Changing Patterns in University Revenues — addresses the ongoing shift in the composition of operating income at Canadian universities and underscores that tuition revenues have become increasingly consequential as government revenues continue to decline as a proportion of funding, focusing on the sector’s increasing reliance on more volatile sources of income, such as those stemming from international students
- Changing Patterns in General Operating Expenditures — examines the concurrent shift that has occurred in expenditures at Canadian universities, highlighting the factors that have driven changes in spending patterns between various expenditure types, including faculty compensation, and across functions.
- Non-Academic Salary Spending Patterns at Canadian Universities — focuses on institutional spending, with an emphasis on non-academic salaries and wages. The analysis explores where compensation is incurred, whether in central administration or within faculties, and contextualizes how growing regulatory requirements, enhanced student services, and increased research support have shaped non-academic compensation. It also examines how institutional size and the degree of administrative centralization influence spending patterns, while highlighting the structural constraints universities face in adapting to fiscal pressures. The interactive dashboard available to accompany this Data Insight has also been updated. Since the analysis is most meaningful when considered in relation to comparable institutions, the dashboard allows users to situate their results within relevant peer groupings. Institutional size, focus, and research intensity can all influence the results; the dashboard therefore supports more meaningful comparisons across institutions of similar size and scope.