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Category: Policy

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

An Update from Australia

Back in our spring (their fall), the Government of Australia announced a new university funding policy, which consisted of: Cutting per-student public funding by about 20%; but, Subsequently allowing funding to rise along with enrolments (this is known in Australia as “demand-driven funding”); Simultaneously de-regulating all tuition; and, Allowing the interest rate on student loans to rise from equal to inflation to equal to the government’s 10-year bond rate (i.e. actually placing a real interest rate on the loan). Understandably, students

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November 12, 2014 No Comments

An Update from England

In 2012, the UK government allowed tuition in English universities to rise from a little over £3,300 to ($5,500) to about £9,000 ($15,300) in a single year.  Well, technically, they de-regulated tuition up to a maximum of £9,000, but since charging less than the maximum would obviously imply that programs weren’t top-quality, pretty much everyone went to the maximum immediately. Actual average tuition jumped to about £8,600 ($14,620). So, of course, we’ve all been wondering what the effects of this would be. 

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November 11, 2014 1 Comment

Three Rules for Politicos

So I see that the Government of Ontario has announced what is possibly the most boutique student aid program of all time.  If students volunteer at the 2014-15 PanAm Games, they will be exempted from the pre-study period contribution (a contribution from the money you earn up to 16 weeks prior to the start of your studies) for 2015-16, and will be get a 12-month grace period on their loans (instead of 6-month) before needing to start repayment. <puts computer

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November 10, 2014 No Comments

Yet More Reasons Free Tuition is a Bad Idea

The easy case to be made against free tuition is that it benefits students from richer backgrounds.  That’s because they are more numerous in higher education than students from poorer backgrounds and so, on aggregate, would receive more aid.  But that misses a more important point: because of the interaction between student aid and tuition, students from wealthier backgrounds would also receive a bigger benefit on an individual level. Let’s take a really simple example from Ontario.  Take two students, Adele and

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November 4, 2014 1 Comment

One Thought to Start Your Day

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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