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Category: Canada

Lessons from Quebec

What lessons can we learn from the current mess in Quebec?  I think two stand out – one for students, and one for universities. The lesson for students is this: it’s great that they can mobilize and maintain pressure on government in the ways they have over the past twelve months.  But, if you fight a tuition fee hike by telling government that there’s oodles of waste and inefficiency in universities, don’t be surprised if they take you at your

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December 19, 2012 No Comments

The Presidential Merry-Go-Round

It was noted recently that there are some big presidential vacancies looming, most notably at Toronto, McGill, Victoria, and Dalhousie.  So who’s going to get these plum jobs? At Dalhousie, of course, we already know the answer: It’s Richard Florizone – formerly the VP Finance and Administration at the University of Saskatchewan, who also had stints at the International Finance Corporation (part of the World Bank), Bombardier, and the Boston Consulting Group. This wasn’t Florizone’s first attempt at becoming a

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December 13, 2012 1 Comment

Islamic Student Loans

READER’S NOTE: HESA does not have connections to any organizations that offer interest-free loans.    As-salaam Alaikum. Every once in awhile, someone in the student movement hears tell of interest in Islam being prohibited, thinks about student loans for a microsecond, and then comes up with the idea that student loans are “unislamic” and, hence, culturally inappropriate.  This, in the past, has led some in Canada to claim that the whole student aid system needs to be revised and made more

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December 12, 2012 14 Comments

Manageable Debt, Part 2

Yesterday, we looked at the principles underlying the discussion on manageable student debt; today we examine how Canadian governments try to help students manage debt, and whether or not their efforts are as efficient as they could be. Manageable debt loads are a function of three things: total debt, interest rates, and student income.  The last of these three is only vaguely susceptible to government control, but governments can control program interest rates and total debt loads through direct subsidies. 

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December 11, 2012 No Comments

Manageable Debt

One of the big questions in student loans these days concerns “manageable debt”.  How much debt is manageable, exactly?  And how do we best help borrowers whose debt is unmanageable? As nearly everyone agrees, manageable debt is a flexible concept. For someone with no income, pretty much any amount of debt is unmanageable.  As income rises, however, an increasing amount of debt can be serviced.   Interest rates and repayment terms matter too, of course;  any established debt-to-income ratio is a

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December 10, 2012 No Comments

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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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