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Author: Alex Usher

The Affordability of Canadian Universities, 2020, Part 1

The affordability of higher education is vital for the accessibility of higher education.  Unfortunately, much of the debate around affordability is conducted in terms simply of prices, and usually inflation-unadjusted ones at that.  But while price is an input to affordability, it is not the whole story.  In fact, it is exactly half the story: the numerator, if you will.  The other half, the denominator, is capacity to pay.  And yet for some reason we almost never bring this into

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November 8, 2022 4 Comments

Canada’s New and Wasteful Student Loan Interest Policy

In the Fall Economic Statement last Thursday, Federal Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland announced that the government will eliminate student loan interest not just on loans going forward, but also retroactively. This was not out of the blue – the government promised this in the last election.  It remains, however, a disastrous idea.  Hundreds of millions of dollars a year for no real net benefit (at least in the field of education).  I have already laid out why this is a

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November 7, 2022 No Comments

Another Australian Fee Revolution?

To Australia, where big things may be afoot.  One thing about Australian higher education politics is that they tend not to do small reforms, regardless of which party is in power.  Where undergraduate fees are concerned, it looks like there might be another big shift, so let’s look at the current state of play. Here’s the first thing you need to understand about undergraduate fees in Australia: they don’t work like fees anywhere else in the sense they are not

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November 3, 2022 No Comments

The Alternative to International Students

No matter where I go, people ask me “what alternative financial models are there which don’t require us to go all-in on international students?”  Not because they have anything against international students, of course: rather, they just find the increasing reliance on this source of fee income as inherently more dangerous/volatile than other sources of income (though I’m not 100% sure that’s actually true). There are two alternatives, which can be combined in various ways.  One I have discussed at

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November 2, 2022 4 Comments

Cape Breton. Yet Again.

Just a quick one today, because you all know how this story goes. The Atlantic Association of Universities, bless them, produces enrolment data every October.  Why it takes every other university in the country over a year to do the same is an utter mystery.  But whatever the reason, it gives us the earliest window into what’s going on nationally in enrolments. Here’s the skinny: Total enrolment is up 1%.  But, predictably, it’s not evenly spread across student types.  International

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November 1, 2022 No Comments

One Thought to Start Your Day

One Thought to Start Your Day is our founder and CEO Alex Usher’s popular daily blog, brimming with up-to-the-minute insights and informed opinions on today’s higher education industry.

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