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Category: Politics

How Student Debt Became a Big Deal in Canada

If you go back to debates in the 1993 election, or Lloyd Axworthy’s famous Social Security “Green Paper”,  most of what you see in the discourse about PSE would be pretty familiar today: “higher tuition = less access”, etc.  But what you wouldn’t find was any discussion of student debt.  It just wasn’t something anyone talked about. Partly, this was because there wasn’t a lot of student debt at the time.  Although federal and provincial loans programs were undergoing a

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October 29, 2013 1 Comment

The Best CFS Chair Ever

I see Brad Lavigne has a new book out about his years as Jack Layton’s campaign strategist.  Time perhaps to mention his other big accomplishment: namely, being the best Chairperson the Canadian Federation of Students (CFS) ever had. The mid-1990s were an ugly time in Canadian PSE.  Federal and provincial governments were broke, and cutting back everywhere.  Partly as a result of this, the student movement polarized – a more left-wing leadership took over the organization and purged the moderates,

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October 23, 2013 2 Comments

Campaign Platforms on Higher Education – Halifax Edition

It’s election time out on the east coast, and with polling day (October 8th) fast approaching, it’s time to see what the various parties have on offer for post-secondary education. The ruling NDP is proposing… nothing.  Nothing at all.  Instead of an actual manifesto, they are running on their record (kind of) and making seven “key commitments” for the next term, none of which touch on post-secondary education in anyway.  This is a tactic often used by sitting governments, but

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September 25, 2013 No Comments

Financing Canadian Universities: A Curious Story (Part 2)

So yesterday we noted how universities’ per-student income had increased 40%.  But we also noted that it’s a universally acknowledged truth that pretty much everyone in higher ed will swear up and down that things are worse than ever, always doing more with less, etc.  Is there a way to reconcile these competing notions without simply coming to the conclusion that profs and administrators are delusional/greedy? Well, sort of.  Let’s start with Figure 1. Figure 1 – Income per FTE Student

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September 10, 2013 7 Comments

Financing Canadian Universities: A Curious Story (Part 1)

if you pay attention to discussions of higher education funding, one of the memes that inevitably pops up revolves around the notion that higher education has been under some brutal, neo-liberal assault since… well, I’m not sure, but probably since 1995 at least, and everything is being defunded, laid on the backs of students, it’s the end of civilization, dark ages ahead, etc., etc. Problem is, this yarn is utterly at odds with the data, which tells a very different

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September 9, 2013 2 Comments

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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