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Category: Policy

Shifting Away from Need-Based Aid in Alberta

Last month, the Government of Alberta announced some fairly radical changes to its student financial aid program, to wit: – The province will no longer count student income, RRSPs and, crucially, parental income in the calculation of revenue. Instead, all students will be expected to make a $1,500 contribution to their education, except for single parents, who will be exempt. – The province is introducing completion grants, as the Herald explains: “$1,000 for a technical certificate, $1,500 for a diploma

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March 2, 2012 No Comments

U.K. Tuition Fees: Early Results Are In

Unless you’ve been in a cave for the last 18 months, you’ve probably heard that the U.K. government is overhauling policies on student fees and government support in England and Wales (Scotland has its own arrangements). Public support for arts and social science students was eliminated, institutional grants were cut by 41% and, most strikingly, the limit on tuition fees was raised from £3,350/year to £9,000/year. Since announcing the broad outlines of the policy fifteen months ago, the Cameron government

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January 31, 2012 2 Comments

Student Surveys We’d Like to See

Surveys of current students tend to focus on just a few areas. Apart from questions about demographics and time use, they ask a lot of specific questions about satisfaction with student services along with a few general questions about overall satisfaction. This is odd, because at the end of the day students don’t actually think student services are central to the overall quality of their PSE experience. What they care about first and foremost is the quality of the teaching

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January 18, 2012 No Comments

A Prayer for Noah Morris

Noah Morris runs the Ontario Student Assistance Program (OSAP). He is the unfortunate soul who has the unenviable task of implementing Dalton McGuinty’s promise to give students 30% tuition rebates if they came from families with less than $160,000 in family income. It may have been popular electorally, but in policy terms it’s got “ugly” written all over it. The government could have implemented this through the OSAP system by just cutting cheques to student aid recipients. But no: somebody

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December 1, 2011 No Comments

Enough About National Goals, Already

In any discussion of Canadian post-secondary education, you know you’re about to approach an impasse when someone starts blaming some real or imagined ill on the lack of “national goals” or the absence of a federal ministry of higher education. Honestly, who cares? The lack of a Department of Education until the Carter administration didn’t stop the U.S. from creating one of the world’s great PSE systems. Our lack of one hasn’t prevented us from having world-class research funding or

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October 12, 2011 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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