Category: Policy

Early Results from the Tennessee “Free Tuition” Experiment

You may remember a blog I wrote last year concerning something called the Tennessee Promise.  Described by some as a “free tuition” program, essentially what it did was ensure that every Tennessee student enrolled in a Tennessee community college received student aid at least equal to tuition.  In the fall, the state touted that first year, direct-from high-school enrollments in Tennessee colleges had increased by fourteen percent.  But now, however, some more complete data is available in the form of

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Innovation Policy: Beyond Digital and Cleantech

So, earlier this month, federal Innovation Minister Navdeep Bains wrote an op-ed in the Toronto Star which lays out, as clearly as possible, where the current government’s thinking is with respect to Innovation policy.  Some of it is good, but some of it is dreck. Let’s start with the good stuff : “Innovation is fundamental to our continued growth and job creation, and it’s impossible to predict where and how disruption will happen. It can be in a start-up garage in Vancouver,

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The Balkanization of Canadian Student Aid

So, a couple of things happened late last week worth mentioning: First, the Newfoundland Budget was released and as predicted it was a slash-and-burn exercise.  The province, facing a deficit of something like 8% of GDP, had to make major changes.  Unbelievably, the tuition freeze stayed, sort of (more on this tomorrow), but student aid took a hit.  Remember in 2014 when Newfoundland eliminated grants?  That’s over, the first $40 week in provincial aid is now a loan again.  But

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Who Won and Who Lost in the CSLP Re-Shuffle

(Warning to readers: today’s blog is a long read about student aid policy.  Skip it if this kind of wonkery isn’t to your taste.) Last week’s historic changes to the Canada Student Loans Program – which saw the elimination of the Education and Textbook Tax Credits, and an increase of 50% in Canada Student Grants – is a very complicated piece of policy to analyze.  Remember that there is no new money in this set-up: any new money given to one set

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Marketing “Free Tuition”

With a major student aid reform almost certain to be announced in the federal budget today, it’s worth pondering how the Ontario Liberals have managed to get themselves into a bit of a mess with how they’ve marketed their own changes to student aid. The Ontario reform, as you will recall, was a shuffling of money rather than an infusion of one (note: some of the shuffling was federal shuffling, not provincial shuffling – that is, the provincial changes are

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