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Category: Policy

Sleepwalking Towards Massively Increased Participation Rates

I was in Berlin last week giving a keynote at the 20th Anniversary conference of the CHE (Centre for Higher Education Policy).  The topic was – promise not to laugh – “What Germany can Learn From Canada”. You said you wouldn’t laugh.  Last time I trust you lot. Anyways, the speech basically revolved around the following graph, which shows Canada’s impressive increase in university participation rates:  Figure 1: 18-21 University Participation Rates, Canada, 1992-2014               So, what

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December 9, 2014 5 Comments

Massachusetts, Not Michigan

TD economist Ed Clark gave an enormously important talk last week, which deserves a lot of attention.  You can get the gist of it from two quotes: “To return to the path to prosperity, Canada needs to stop wasting time worrying about how to get low-wage jobs back from the U.S. or abroad and start thinking about how to use our well-educated population, immigration policies and public health care to our advantage”. “Stop competing with Michigan. Start competing with Massachusetts”.

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December 8, 2014 1 Comment

Solving the Fees Problem

So, here’s the problem: Canadian governments are mostly broke.  Even the ones that didn’t look broke a couple of months ago (Alberta, Saskatchewan, Newfoundland) are now very definitely broke (especially Newfoundland).  There’s no money for PSE.  Everybody knows that. So, equally, everyone knows that the only way institutions are going to avoid a crunch is either by turning themselves into finishing schools for the Asian middle class, or by charging domestic students higher tuition fees.  No one genuinely thinks the

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December 3, 2014 No Comments

Independence Day

When should a student be considered independent of his or her parents for the purpose of calculating student assistance?  It’s a tricky question, which generates different answers in different parts of the world. Most student loan schemes require some kind of test of parental income for at least some of their clients.  In some places, it’s a way to save money – there isn’t enough to go around, so let’s prioritize the less well-off.  In other places (including Canada), it’s

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November 20, 2014 No Comments

The Canada Post-Secondary Education Act

History lesson: Back in 1864, Canada West (i.e. Ontario) was getting hot under the collar about a little thing called representation by population.  Since the Durham Report, the two Canadas had been governed under a system that gave both Upper and Lower Canada a veto over legislation.  This had made sense when the two colonies were roughly the same size, but now that Canada West was growing faster, it seemed like a bad deal. The solution to this problem was

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November 19, 2014 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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