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Category: Access

Free Harvard Fair Harvard

Harvard has a unique Governance structure.  Basically, it has two boards and no Senate.  One of the two boards – the Board of Overseers – is composed entirely of Harvard alumni.  It has thirty members and the membership turns over a bit each year with annual elections.  This year’s annual election is a bit of a doozy. Back in January, an alumni and businessman by the name of Ron Unz submitted a slate of candidates – which included consumer activist

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April 29, 2016 No Comments

The Development of Post-Secondary Education Systems in Canada

This is the title of a recent-ish book (subtitle: a comparison between British Columbia, Ontario, and Quebec, 1980-2010) edited, and largely written by Don Fisher and Kjell Rubenson of UBC, Teresa Shanahan of York U, and Claude Trottier of Université Laval.  Despite a couple of significant faults, it’s well worth a read. The book’s main strengths are the three chapters that act as histories of each of the titular provinces.  We haven’t had a really decent history of Canadian higher

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March 31, 2016 No Comments

ECE Contributions vs. PSE Contributions

Morning all.  Today, HESA is releasing a paper called “What We Ask of Parents: Unequal Expectations for Parental Contributions to Early-Childhood and Post-Secondary Education in Canada”, by Jacqueline Lambert, Jonathan Williams, and me.  The gist of it is: “Holy cow, we ask parents to contribute a lot more to ECE than PSE – why is that?” You can click here to read the whole report, or you can see the short version as an op-ed in today’s Globe and Mail.  What I want to

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March 15, 2016 3 Comments

The Coming Cost Debate in Ontario

Today I want to think about how the new Ontario system of student assistance is going to play out.  I think there is the potential here for quite an interesting and useful debate; but the timetable is somewhat tricky. As you will recall, the Government of Ontario is rolling out a plan to provide enough grants to fully offset tuition in most university and college programs for students from families with incomes of less than $50,000.  That’s going to happen

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March 8, 2016 2 Comments

Two Simple Reasons Tuition Rises Have Little Effect on Access

It’s that time again, when boards of governors are thinking about tuition for the upcoming year; and as a result, people will be rehearsing their arguments for and against tuition increases.  The basic argument against is the rather simplistic, “higher fees means lower participation”.  And it’s wrong.  Here’s why: The argument essentially relies on that thing everyone remembers from first-year Econ, where you draw your first supply/demand curves.  When price falls, demand rises; conversely, when price rises, demand falls.  Therefore,

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February 16, 2016 2 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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