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Category: Canada

Interest on Student Loans – Time to Go Dutch

News out of the U.S. suggests that one possible casualty of that country’s budget crisis is the in-school interest subsidy on student loans. Since Canadian governments almost always end up copying the Americans on student aid eventually (see: income-based grants, rules on institutional designation, workforce-related loan forgiveness, etc.), this seems like a good time for Canada to review its own policies on student loan interest. Some countries, like Germany and many developing countries, charge no interest at all on student

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October 6, 2011 2 Comments

Why are Toronto Students so Friggin’ Miserable? (Part One)

Seriously, why is it that every time we do a survey for the Globe and Mail, the Toronto schools all look so weak in terms of student satisfaction? The best of the bunch – Ryerson – gets a B+, which is average for the country as a whole, but everyone else regularly gets Bs and B-minuses – or worse. Objectively, this seems weird. U of T is by any definition a world-class university. York has the challenge of being a

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October 3, 2011 1 Comment

The 160 Student Solution

Here’s an important question. Why do we care about how many classes a professor teaches? Virtually every university collective agreement has some kind of minimum or average or desirable teaching load – 2+3, 2+2, etc. It doesn’t really matter since so many professors are buying their way out of these anyway and going down to one class a term. Regardless, though, the unit of analysis here is the course. This makes absolutely no sense. Universities don’t get paid based on

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September 20, 2011 2 Comments

International Student Recruitment: Not as Good as We Think We Are

One of the most startling things about Canada’s recent success in attracting international students is how easy it has all been. Australia and the U.K. took decades to build up their position in international higher education, and in the former case it took decades of government-backed investment in developing overseas networks. Our recent extraordinary spurt of growth in international higher education – particularly in the Indian market – came in the space of about five years in a comparatively uncoordinated

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September 19, 2011 1 Comment

Data Point of the Week: StatsCan Gets it Wrong in the EAG

So, as noted yesterday, the OECD’s Education at a Glance (EAG) statfest – all 495 pages of it – was just released. Now it’s our turn to dissect some of what’s in there. Of most immediate interest was chart B5.3, which shows the relative size of public subsidies for higher education as a percentage of public expenditures on education. It’s an odd measure, because having a high percentage could mean either that a country has very high subsidies (e.g., Norway, Sweden) or very low public expenditures (e.g.,

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September 14, 2011 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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