Category: Canada

As we saw yesterday, while student debt at graduation has been increasing, falling interest rates have meant that monthly student debt payments have made up a smaller share of a graduate’s income in recent years. Of course means and medians only tell part of the story. While it may be true that the average borrower was better off in 2007 than in 2002 despite graduating with more debt, the same can’t be said for every borrower. As Figure 1 points

A few months ago, we reported that increases in student debt in the 2000s did not keep up with tuition, owing largely to increases in student grant and bursary programs. Yet the raw amount of student debt at graduation tells only part of the story. Thinking about debt in terms of balance owing can obscure more than it reveals; it’s also worth looking at debt from the lens of monthly student loan payments. Given student loans’ fixed repayment period, monthly