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Category: Access

How the Zero-Tuition Crew Could Learn to Love Tax Credits

So, let’s say you’re among those who clings to the idea that tuition isn’t just a massive give-away to upper-income families.  Let’s say you really, really believe that tuition – sticker-price tuition, none of these “net price calculations”, thank you very much – affects access.  How would you go about gathering evidence for your point of view? Ideally, of course, there would be some data showing that, as fees went up, participation went down.  Problem is, the data doesn’t show

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October 1, 2013 1 Comment

Why Public Higher Education Should be Free…

… is the unfortunate title of a new book by Robert Samuels, a professor at the University of California, and president of the University Council – American Federation of Teachers.  The title is unfortunate because the book’s not really about free tuition; the subject doesn’t really get a look-in until about three-quarters of the way through.  Rather, Samuels’ book is mostly about (as he puts it in the title of his first chapter) why tuition goes up and quality goes down. 

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September 17, 2013 No Comments

Affordability

At some point in the next week or so, Statistics Canada will be releasing its annual statistics on tuition fees.  Hopefully it will be less of a fiasco than last year, when they released data a few days after the Quebec election, but didn’t bother to note that the planned tuition fee hike was being reversed. What I want to do today is to put the inevitable “rising fees” stories that always accompany the Statscan release into some sort of

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September 5, 2013 6 Comments

So, This Obama Plan, Then (Part 2)

To recap yesterday’s blog: President Obama has a plan to make colleges reduce their costs, and deliver better value for money.  It involves having the government rate institutions on Accessibility, Affordability, and Outcomes; those which rate poorly risk losing eligibility for various forms of federal student aid (which, in total, is up around $150 billion/year these days). While there’s no question that college costs do need to be reined in, this particular solution strikes me as odd.  Here’s what you

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August 30, 2013 No Comments

A Dreadful Argument About Tuition Fees

I see that the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives has just released a new paper by Hugh MacKenzie called The Impact of Taxation on the Higher Education Debates. It’s worth a read because it sets out the argument against higher fees in the most respectable terms possible – certainly more respectable that anything student groups themselves have come up with. It is still, however, a pretty crap argument. The spiel runs like this: the lazy talking point about how higher

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June 17, 2013 1 Comment

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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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