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Category: Policy

Summer Reading

Hi all.  Enjoying summer yet? Three recent works that I think are worth a peak at over the summer: 1.       George Fallis’ Rethinking Higher Education: Participation, Research and Differentiation.  The thing you need to know about George Fallis is that the size of the books he writes are all out of proportion to the point he is trying to make.  They’re good books, substantial books, useful books, but the actual point he makes could probably be made in an article of 15

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June 16, 2014 No Comments

Ontario Platform Review

The current Ontario election is possibly the most depressing one I’ve ever lived through.  I agree entirely with Laval’s Stephen Gordon, who describes the province as the northern equivalent of Argentina: formerly great, and utterly unable to deal with decline.  Kathleen Wynne isn’t quite Cristina Fernandez, of course, the Liberals aren’t quite Peronists, and Toronto FC sure ain’t Boca Juniors.  But there are still enough parallels to make you go “hmmmm”. Anyways, where do the three parties stand on post-secondary

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May 27, 2014 No Comments

The Australian Revolution

Something important is happening in Australia. Briefly: a right-wing coalition took power in Australia a few months ago.  Said coalition created a “commission of audit” to look over public finances, and recommend “economies”; unsurprisingly, it came back with recommendations much like the ones the Commission on the Reform of Ontario Public Services would have, if Don Drummond, instead of being a mild, respected former public servant, had been an Orc with especially low blood-sugar.  Among the recommendations: large cuts in government

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May 22, 2014 1 Comment

Rationalizing Regressive Subsidies

A couple of weeks ago, I wrote a blog analysing the distributional effects of tuition reductions vs. targeted grants, and concluded that the latter was far more progressive in their impact than the former.  In response, Carleton professor Nick Falvo wrote a piece on OCUFA’s Academic Matters website saying that I was “wrong about tuition”.  Because some of his arguments are interesting – to his credit, he didn’t reach for the appalling argument that a regressive distribution of benefits is OK because the

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May 21, 2014 3 Comments

Nova Scotia Ditches a Bad Subsidy

About a decade ago, a really bad policy idea started making its way across the country’s “have-not” provinces.  I can’t remember if it started in Saskatchewan or New Brunswick, but within a couple of years it had spread to Manitoba and Nova Scotia, as well.  The details (and generosity) of this policy varied somewhat, but the gist of it was this: “let’s pay our graduates not to leave the province by refunding a portion of their tuition, via tax reductions,

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April 25, 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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