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Category: Politics

Straight Thinking about International Education (3)

If we’re going to get into this international education business seriously, then we need to drop a lot of the pretense and mythologizing that goes on in the field and take a really hard-headed look at what our strengths and weaknesses are. These come into two categories: things we say all the time that aren’t really true, and things which are true but which we are reluctant to say. The alleged “truth” that bothers me the most is the one

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October 3, 2012 1 Comment

Back to (Red) Square One

Alex Usher and Joseph Berger The Parti Québécois’ Tuesday night victory will have major effects on higher education in Quebec, but there are implications right across the country, too. Here are a few of them. Inside Quebec, things are back to square one. The PQ has already told student leaders it’s cancelling the increases to tuition; recent improvements to student aid are unlikely to stick, since they were largely going to be funded via tuition revenue – but the PQ hasn’t made any

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September 7, 2012 No Comments

Stalemate

A few of you have asked why we haven’t been writing about Quebec lately. Frankly, what’s the point? This ceased long ago to be about education. It’s completely mystifying how this has gone on as long as it has. As a recent CROP poll shows, two-thirds of the province backs the premier on tuition fees, half back his remarkably illiberal Loi 78 (and even larger majorities back most of the specific measures). And yet the government still can’t get traction. It

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June 1, 2012 No Comments

Those Statscan Cutbacks

Many will have seen news yesterday about large cutbacks in the works at Statistics Canada. On the basis of the news that lots of PSAC members had received notices that their jobs may be “affected,” a number of pro-Statscan commentators rushed to say that the agency needed to be saved because it provided such fantastic, non-partisan analysis. Well, yes. But yesterday’s notices appear not to have gone to any analysts, since they are not PSAC members.  The employees who got notices would

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May 2, 2012 2 Comments

How Jean Charest Could Learn to Stop Worrying and Love a Tuition Rollback

If you’re Jean Charest, you’re probably starting to get antsy about the student strike jeopardizing the winter semester. But there’s actually a pretty simple way that the Quebec government could solve the impasse. A few weeks ago, we explained how what universities charge (sticker price) is different from what students pay (net tuition), due to the multi-headed loan-and-bursary monster known as student aid. But loans and bursaries aren’t the only way to offset tuition – there are also billions of

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April 11, 2012 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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