There are a lot of institutions facing a demographic challenge over the next few years. Outside the GTA and the B.C. lower mainland, the youth population is in decline, and that means institutions in these regions are either going to have to start increasing their yields or find some new markets to exploit. (Or, I suppose, cut their budgets a bit, but that seems to be a last resort.) Though I can’t claim to have a lot of granular detail
Chances are you’re familiar with Registered Education Savings Plans. Though they’ve been around for 40 years now, it was only with the 1998 budget’s introduction of the Canada Education Savings Grants and their 20% top-ups of RESP contributions that they got big. Nowadays, parents contribute $3.39 billion per year to RESPs, and the CESG program hands out $667.1 million per year. Of course, people pointed out at the time that the CESGs offered much more to families that could afford to
While out in Saskatchewan recently, I heard an interesting rumour to the effect that INAC was investigating the possibility that substantial sums of PSSSP money – that is, money paid to individual First Nations for use by their members for post-secondary education – was either going unused or being used for purposes other than post-secondary education. Assuming this is true, one shouldn’t jump to the conclusion that fraud is at work (though obviously that’s possible). It’s not unheard of for
Last month, the Government of Alberta announced some fairly radical changes to its student financial aid program, to wit: – The province will no longer count student income, RRSPs and, crucially, parental income in the calculation of revenue. Instead, all students will be expected to make a $1,500 contribution to their education, except for single parents, who will be exempt. – The province is introducing completion grants, as the Herald explains: “$1,000 for a technical certificate, $1,500 for a diploma
There was an interesting report out of the U.K.’s University and College Union (roughly the equivalent of our CAUT) last week, describing how the number of English degree programs (which, confusingly for us, are called “courses” over there) has fallen by a quarter in the last six years. The back-and-forth in the media between talking heads on this story was quite amusing, with a leftish union rallying around the banner of “choice” and a right-wing government claiming that the raw
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