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Category: Canada

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

Access to Opportunity

There’s been a fair bit of talk over the past few months about the practice of articling in Ontario.  Specifically, the problem is that there are too many law school graduates for too few articling positions.  The situation has deteriorated to the point where the Law Society of Upper Canada has released a major report outlining an “alternative work experience,” in order to deal with the surplus of students who don’t get “real” articling positions.   For what it’s worth, I tend to

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December 5, 2012 No Comments

Mental Health on Campus

There’s a lot of talk about mental health on campus these days – Sunday’s Globe feature, a Toronto Star piece from last week, and the September cover story in Maclean’s, are but three recent examples.  Part of what seems to be driving the increased concern is that the kids affected by this crisis aren’t necessarily the ones on the margin, but are often amongst those considered to be “high-achievers.” Without casting doubt on the seriousness of the issue – and it is

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December 4, 2012 2 Comments

If I were a Human Trafficker…

… I might be looking at Canadian immigration and student visa policies and thinking that there were some pretty nice loopholes to exploit. Because there are some fairly juicy ones out there. The most obvious loophole – which, in fairness, the government is already moving to close – is that student visas don’t currently require students to attend a particular institution. Hence the stories of students arriving but never attending a school, or of some Ontario institutions “stealing” visa students

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November 21, 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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