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Category: Access

Sacrifice

What are we willing to sacrifice to make sure our kids get an education? I ask this question because it’s pretty clear to me that the answer is highly culturally specific. And our own culture doesn’t come out looking too good. Families in Asian countries – particularly those from Confucian societies – don’t worry too much about things like affordability and student aid. Tiger mother stereotypes aside, there’s good survey evidence showing that it’s quite normal for even very poor

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February 20, 2012 5 Comments

U.K. Tuition Fees: Early Results Are In

Unless you’ve been in a cave for the last 18 months, you’ve probably heard that the U.K. government is overhauling policies on student fees and government support in England and Wales (Scotland has its own arrangements). Public support for arts and social science students was eliminated, institutional grants were cut by 41% and, most strikingly, the limit on tuition fees was raised from £3,350/year to £9,000/year. Since announcing the broad outlines of the policy fifteen months ago, the Cameron government

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January 31, 2012 2 Comments

Affordable Enough?

“Everybody knows” that student debt loads are spiralling out of control, that the incidence of debt is growing at an alarming rate and that debt loads are unsustainable. Student debt forgiveness has played a major role in the Occupy movement in the United States, where student debt doubled in the last decade and now exceeds credit card debt. If reports are to be believed, we are in the midst of a student loan crisis. Scratch the surface a little and you’ll

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December 15, 2011 No Comments

Financial Illiteracy

Last week I joined researchers, policymakers and innovative practitioners at the HEQCO Fear of Finance: Financial Literacy and Planning for Post-Secondary Education conference. Kudos to the HEQCO team for putting on a fantastically relevant conference that brought these diverse groups together; it doesn’t happen very often, and it was engaging for participants step out of our usual silos for a couple of days. I presented on what I call financial aid literacy in PSE; that is, what students and their parents

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November 10, 2011 No Comments

By Their Actions Shall Ye Know Them

There are two ways of thinking about student unions. You can think of them as being (a) populated by idealists, who only want education for all, or you can think of them as (b) actual unions, prioritizing wins (financial and otherwise) for their members – who, let’s recall, tend to come from wealthier backgrounds than society as a whole – ahead of any other cause. With that in mind, let’s look at the some recent public statements from the Canadian

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September 22, 2011 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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