QCAA has received several questions about the blog post ‘Is Queen’s Running Out of Money’ posted by Alex Usher of Higher Education Strategy Associates (HESA). There are many important parts of this analysis and we share in the argument that, as put in the blog:

There are fair arguments to be had about whether [balancing the budget] needs to be done in two years rather than three, the extent to which the balance needs to come through increased revenue or reduced costs (the former is more hopeful, the latter more reliable) and whether there is room to change endowment disbursement policy to reduce pressure on the operating budget.  At the same time, talk that the institution is “going bust” is probably unhelpful: deliberate or not, it conjures up images of what happened at Laurentian, and however bad the current operating deficit is, Queen’s simply is not facing the kind of disastrous liquidity position that Laurentian was.

Alex Usher, Higher Education Strategy Associates

However, we do need to clarify that the post is incorrect in stating that the QCAA’s figures are based on misunderstanding the difference between the operating and overall budget. The average of $44 million in overestimated budget deficits over the past six years are entirely within the operating budget.

Read more for documentary evidence behind our calculations.