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Category: Student Aid

Do the Poor Really Pay More?

There’s a trope out there that goes something like this: “Loans are unfair because interest on the loans means that needy students pay more in total to go to school than students who don’t need a loan“.  If it were true, this would indeed be problematic.  But the thing is, for the most part, it’s not. Let’s follow two hypothetical students: Claudia and Eveline.  Claudia can manage to pay $25,000 for her four years of tuition, upfront; Eveline cannot, and

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October 7, 2014 4 Comments

Remembering the Axworthy Green Paper

It was 20 years ago today that then-Human Resources Minister Lloyd Axworthy presented the findings from his long-awaited “Green Paper” on social security to the House of Commons (the paper itself was released the day before, on October 5, 1994).  The back-drop:  Lucien Bouchard was leader of the opposition, Jacques Parizeau was the new Premier of Quebec, and we were on track for a referendum the following year.  Unemployment was over 10 percent; for youth, it was 20 percent.  Our

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October 6, 2014 No Comments

Ending the Merit Scholarship Arms Race

Here’s a way the new Ontario Minister of Training Colleges and Universities, Reza Moridi, could do everyone an enormous service, and win political capital at the same time: force institutions to cut back radically on automatic merit-based entrance scholarships. Here’s the background: at some point in the 1990s, Canadian institutions hooked onto the idea of giving out entrance awards as a way of managing enrolment.  It was a nice trick to help lock students in early in the admissions process

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September 25, 2014 4 Comments

The Problem at the Back End

Yesterday, we talked about how the Canadian aid system was both generous and clumsily organized, what with most of it being delivered through tax credits and loan remissions – neither of which shows up directly to reduce tuition at the time of registration.  This is something that needs to change; if we’re giving students so much money, we should at last give it to them in a form that is both useful and comprehensible.  So why can’t we do it? Our

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August 27, 2014 3 Comments

What Students Really Pay

In a couple of weeks, Statistics Canada will publish its annual Tuition and Living Accommodation Cost (TLAC) survey, which is an annual excuse to allow the usual suspects to complain about tuition fees.  But sticker price is only part of the equation: while governments and institutions ask students to pay for part of the educational costs, they also find ways to lessen the burden through subsidies like grants, loan remission, and tax expenditures.  And Statscan never bothers to count that

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August 26, 2014 4 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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