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Category: Policy

The Unbearable Mediocrity of Canadian Public Policy

A few months ago, I wrote a very harsh review of a paper written by the former head of the Canadian Council on Learning, Paul Cappon.  I was mostly cheesed off by Cappon’s mindless (and occasionally mendacious) cheerleading on behalf of an expanded role for the federal government in education.  But in one respect, Cappon had a point: though I disagree with him about what level of government should be doing it, we need someone in Canada setting goals for our

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February 10, 2015 3 Comments

The “Skills for Jobs Blueprint”

I don’t pay as much attention as I should on this blog to matters British Columbian, mostly because I don’t get out there often enough.  But the province’s “Skills for Jobs  Blueprint” cries out for some critical treatment, because frankly it’s not all that smart. Turn back the clock a bit: in April 2014, the BC government rolled-out a series of policies that were collectively branded as the “Skills for Jobs Blueprint”.  Much of it consisted of relatively sensible changes

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February 4, 2015 No Comments

Another Australian De-regulation Update

So the last time we tuned into antics in Canberra, the government was trying to pass a fairly ambitious piece of legislation that would completely de-regulate tuition fees while (more or less) maintaining the HECS system, which means post-graduate contributions are always tied to income, and thus do not become too onerous.  The government was also going to cut institutional grants by about 20%, but keep the “demand-driven” system in which government dollars follow students no matter how many students attend.

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January 28, 2015 No Comments

Setting Tuition Fees

On what basis can tuition fees be set?  Let us count the ways. The most obvious is “whatever the market will bear”.  This is the way most goods and services are priced, and the system on the whole works pretty well.  Private institutions around the world also work on this principle.  So do public institutions in many places, at least where MBAs and international students are concerned (also out-of-state students in the US). But other than that, public institutions are not permitted to charge

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January 27, 2015 4 Comments

Packaging Student Aid

One of the things about student aid that makes it such great fun as a policy area is that it’s as much about framing as it is about actual policy.  For instance, which of the following two policies would you like to have? a)      A policy where students are asked to bear a huge amount of debt – over $100,000 in some cases for an undergraduate degree – over 25 years, and where three-quarters of students will never repay

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January 13, 2015 1 Comment

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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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